Black and grey mandala tattoo with peach-shaded flowers and dotted beadwork on the upper thigh, worn under a red tartan skirt.

Mandala and flowers on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A triangular mandala design with a row of shaded beads along its upper edge, two layered flower motifs in soft peach shading, and fine black linework framing the pattern. The tattoo sits on the upper thigh and is framed by a red tartan skirt at the bottom of the photo, with a car interior visible behind.

Botanical Dotwork Thigh Mandala Flower Bead Dot Ornament Triangle Lotus

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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

Sit down by the radiator, pet, and mind the crack in the lino. Nobody on the ninth floor of Harrow Point believed the lotus was real, not even Mrs Abara, and she grew it in a coffee tin on her windowsill. It only opened when the lift broke down, which was often, so you can imagine how much the council hated it.

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Every morning, the old men said, three beads of rain sat on the rim of that tin, counting the flats like a rosary. Each bead was a household: the Sandhus on eleven, the trumpet boy who practised on the stairwell landing, and the couple through the wall who had stopped speaking to each other years back. The beads made a triangle pointing up at a sky the tower could never reach, and the flower opened in the middle of them, pale as a seashell, peach at the petals and grey where the damp crept into the root.

One winter the lift stopped for nine days. The trumpet boy climbed the stairs each evening with bread and news, and on the ninth day the couple from the wall knocked on Mrs Abara's door together, carrying the tin between them like a sick child. The flower had opened in the dark of the stairwell, with no light at all, and the three of them stood there until the bulbs came back on.

So when you hear that lift grinding, you know which way to look. Count the beads, pet. Count them, and you'll find you've got one or two more than you started with.