Three matryoshka nesting doll tattoos in brown line work sit side by side on forearms, decreasing in size from left to right.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matryoshka doll tattoos on three forearms

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three matryoshka nesting dolls are drawn in brown ink on three forearms, each doll smaller than the last from left to right. Each doll has a headscarf, closed eyes, and a patterned body decorated with flowers and vertical hatching. The bold, simple outlines are shown in a flat, cartoon-like style against plain skin, and the photograph is taken straight on.

Forearm Doll Flower Lace pattern

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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 Nell, the peonies at the back gate have finally opened, all of them at once like they'd been waiting for permission, so I cut six and put them in the blue jug on the kitchen windowsill where you used to do your homework with your tongue poking out. Your mother says I'm getting sentimental in my old age. I'm getting old, that much is true, and sentiment is cheaper than therapy.

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You asked in your last card whether I'd ever regretted the three of us going off to the parlour in Hastings together, all of us daft with the same idea. I haven't. Your Aunt Pat still says the middle doll looks like her, sleepy-eyed and disapproving, and I told her that was the only reason I chose it. The little one is yours, the one you insisted on being smallest because you wanted to be the one who fit inside everybody else.

The biggest one still makes me laugh. The artist, a lovely young man with ink up to his elbows, kept asking whether we wanted the flowers on the skirts fatter, and I kept saying yes, fatter, the way your gran liked her tulips. We sat in a row on the bench afterwards holding our arms out like we'd been sworn in to something.

Come down at the weekend. I'll pick the last of the runner beans and we can sit on the step and count the nesting dolls we've got between us. Bring your sister if she'll come. Love, Mum.