Traditional colour swallow tattoos with red roses and small stars on the tops of both feet, above navy espadrilles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching swallows and roses on both feet

Traditional · Ankle · Colour · Photo

Two matching swallow tattoos sit on the tops of a pair of feet, each with spread blue and black wings above a red rose. Small black stars are scattered around both designs, and bold dark outlines give a classic flash look with solid fills. Rolled denim and navy canvas espadrilles with anchor and bow motifs frame the image against a grey paved ground.

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 swallows came back to the harbour wall the same week the Marigold docked with her hold empty, and Old Tam Brenner said that was no coincidence. He had a saying his father taught him: a swallow over the sea means a sailor who has come home a long way. He stood on the quay with his cap in his hands and watched the birds dip under the gantry as if they had paid for their passage.

Keep reading

His daughter Ruth had no time for omens. She ran the chandlery on Fore Street, sorting rope by lay and gauge, and she had a bolt of navy canvas in the back room and a tin of pink dye bought for a christening that never happened. When her father asked for a pair of espadrilles for the wedding, she stitched white bows across the toes and a small brass anchor on each heel, and told him the swallows could fly wherever they liked.

The wedding was held in the lifeboat house. Tam danced with the bride's mother, who trod on his toes twice, and afterwards he sat on an upturned crate and laughed at the swallows nesting in the rafters. Ruth brought out two cups of tea and found him studying the flagstones, where the gulls had left a dozen white marks like punctuation.

"Every star is a port," he said, nodding at his shoes. "The rose is the one that waited." Ruth looked at the tiny anchors and the crooked bows she had sewn that morning, and realised he had never once asked her to make them straight. "How many ports?" she asked. He thought about it for a long time, then shook his head and said he'd lost count somewhere off Valparaíso.

More like this

Colour tattoo of a stag with large antlers, a bird and a red rose on a lower leg, in a neo-traditional style.
Stag and rose on a lower leg
Two bare lower legs raised in burgundy boots, showing traditional tattoos of a bow, camera, rose, ship's wheel, playing card and small script on the calves.
Traditional tattoos on both calves
Two matching traditional red rose tattoos with green leaves and black outlines, one on the top of each foot, shown above brown leather shoes.
Red rose tattoos on both feet
Two lower legs with traditional style tattoos of red roses, a cat's head, a moth and a penny-farthing bicycle, worn with a grey skirt and black shoes.
Traditional roses, cat and moth on two legs
Two legs in denim shorts and black sneakers covered in colour neo-traditional tattoos, including an owl, a raven with roses, a fox and a rabbit.
Full leg sleeve of colourful neo-traditional tattoos
Two colourful sugar skull tattoos with roses and flowers on a woman's upper thighs, shown in denim shorts, traditional style.
Sugar skull tattoos on the thighs
Two ankle tattoos in traditional style: red cherries with green stems on one ankle and a grey shaded swallow in flight on the other, with white canvas trainers.
Cherries and swallow on both ankles
Black script tattoo reading Allons-y on the top of a foot near the ankle, with blue bow flats and dark jeans visible.
Allons-y script tattoo on the foot
Black and grey botanical tattoo of lily-like flowers and leaves inside a dotted diamond outline on the upper thigh.
Floral tattoo in a diamond on a thigh
Two raised legs in red Converse trainers show bold traditional tattoos on the calves, including a butterfly, a rose, a spider and a ship's wheel.
Traditional leg tattoos with red Converse trainers
Colourful traditional-style feather tattoo with black outlines and orange, pink and teal tones on a forearm, with partial arrow tattoos at the edges.
Traditional feather tattoo on a forearm
Colour botanical tattoos of pink magnolia blossoms, green leaves and small teal and orange birds wrapping the ankles and lower legs of two bare feet.
Blossom branches and birds on both ankles

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.