Two people seen from behind, each with a black and grey puzzle piece tattoo on the shoulder blade, one holding a swirling filigree motif and the other a key with a heart-shaped bow.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching puzzle piece tattoos on shoulders

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

Two people are photographed from behind, each with a single puzzle piece tattoo on the upper back near the shoulder blade. The left piece contains a swirling, ornate filigree design, while the right piece contains a key with a heart-shaped bow, both drawn in fine dark outlines with light grey shading. The pieces are in black and grey ink against plain skin, with a pale wall behind and dark clothing at the bottom of the frame.

Fine line Shoulder Puzzle piece Key Heart Swirl Filigree Matching

Find an artist for this

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 rain had found its way under every tarpaulin on Coldharbour Market by noon, and the stallholders had stopped pretending otherwise. Ilse Brandt sold locks from a trestle beside the fishmonger, and she had sold none that day. When a girl came dripping up to her table with a tin box under one arm and a fistful of wet coins, Ilse set down her tea and listened.

Keep reading

The tin would not open, the girl said. Her grandmother had left it to her and her sister, with a key that had a heart cut into its bow, and a lock all curling iron, like frost on a window. The key had gone missing years ago, and the sister had gone to the coast. "Can you make a key for a thing you've never seen?" Ilse looked at the lock, turned it over in her palm, and laughed, because she had cut that lock herself thirty winters back for a woman who asked the same question and paid in pears.

"A lock and its key," Ilse said, "cut to fit each other and no one else. I sold the lock to the woman, and the key went across the water with her sister, because that was the bargain. They were meant to come back together." The girl's hands tightened on the tin. She had come from the coast on the early bus, her coat soaked through, and she had not thought to ask where the other half had gone.

Ilse pointed with her spoon across the aisle, to a stall where a woman in a green anorak was tying down a canvas. The girl ran. By the time the rain eased they sat together on an upturned crate with the box open between them, the key turning in the iron, and the tea going cold on the trestle.