Colourful neo-traditional tattoo of a swirl lollipop, pink bow and wrapped sweets on a forearm, set against green and purple watercolour splashes.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lollipop and pink bow with wrapped sweets

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A large swirl lollipop with a pink bow tied around its stick fills most of the frame, with two wrapped sweets placed beside it. The outlines are bold and the shading is smooth, with segments of the lollipop in purple, blue, yellow and orange. Soft green and purple watercolour splashes sit behind the design on the skin.

Neo-trad Forearm Lollipop Bow Swirl Watercolour splash

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Wren, the fair pitched on the rec ground at Halsey on Tuesday, and Mr Corran has let me run the toffee apple stall while Dad's knee mends. Everything smells of sugar and wet canvas. The big wheel has a bulb missing, so every turn it blinks at us like it's thinking something over.

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Every evening a small girl in a yellow mac stands at the edge of the ground, staring at the swirl lollipop that hangs on the prize board above the hook-a-duck. It is as wide as a dinner plate, purple and blue and orange in rings, and Mr Pardoe swears it has been up there since before decimalisation. She has one penny. She tells me it is for her gran, who is poorly, and that her gran likes things that go round and round.

On Thursday it rained so hard the paint on the dodgems ran into the puddles, and nobody came. The girl came anyway. I took the lollipop down and gave it to her. She gave me her penny, then untied the pink ribbon from the end of her plait and knotted it round the stick, because it looked bare to her. She put a purple wrapped sweet in my apron pocket as well, the kind with twisted ends, and said that was for working late.

I think of that most when the sun comes out and the puddles go gold. Come up for the August fair if you can. I'll show you where the ribbon went, and you can tell me whether the gran ever got her turn.