Black ornamental mandala tattoo covering the wrist and back of a hand, with small dotted and linear motifs on the fingers.

Mandala pattern across wrist and back of hand

Geometric · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand and wrist rest on a magenta velvet cloth, with a black ornamental tattoo covering the wrist band, the back of the hand and parts of the fingers. The design uses symmetrical scalloped borders, fern-like sprigs and lace-style motifs, built from bold and fine black linework with some shaded fill. The image is a close overhead view with the fingers and pink nails in the lower half and a phone partly visible at the top left.

Geometric Hand Forearm Mandala Ornamental pattern Lace pattern Fern Finger tattoo Wrist band

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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

The velvet had been Mrs Pargeter's idea, a deep red the colour of the sealing wax her husband pressed onto the dispatch boxes at the Exeter office. Ruth laid her pins along the scalloped edge the way her mother had taught her, counting bobbins under the lamp until the numbers blurred. Down in the market square a tram bell rang twice, then the street went quiet again.

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The commission was a veil for the vicar's daughter, and the pattern came from a sampler folded inside a sea chest that had belonged to Tobias Vane, a ship's carpenter who had sailed to Madras and come home talking about ferns that grew only on the islands. Ruth had never seen a fern like the one on that sampler. Its sprig curled at the tip like a question mark, and she worked it three times before the thread stopped fighting her and began to lie flat.

The veil was finished the night before the wedding, but the vicar's daughter took one look at its border, so fine that the lamplight passed straight through the scallops, and asked whether it might be kept for something less grand. Ruth did not argue. She took it home, pinned it over her kitchen table, and sat with her tea going cold until the lace caught the morning light and threw a web of shadow across the wood. Some patterns, she thought, are only ever meant to be looked at.