Black and grey traditional tattoo of a planchette with a crescent moon and three flowers on the thigh, beside a heron leg and a feather.

Planchette with crescent moon and flowers on thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A planchette shape with a dotted border sits at the centre, with a crescent moon, radiating sunburst lines and a circle holding stylised lettering. Three flowers and pointed leaves surround it, with bold outlines and solid black shadow. Two other tattoos, a heron's leg and a feather, appear at the edges of the frame, and the image is in black and grey ink on the outer thigh.

Traditional Botanical Thigh Crescent moon Sunburst Flower Leaves Feather Wing Lettering

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

Mind the third stair, it gives under a grown man, and you've got a lighter step than most. Sit where the window can see you. That's how Mrs Ogle liked it, God rest her. She bought the board off a travelling pedlar the summer the big hotel burned down, paid three shillings and a paper twist of boiled sweets, and never once let anyone play with it after dark.

Keep reading

The board lived in the front parlour of Gull Rest, our boarding house above the harbour at Saltry, and on wet afternoons the guests would take turns with it. Most got nothing but their own elbows jigging. Then a surveyor named Tobias Penhale, who measured the tides for the council, sat down with a sceptical smirk, and the pointer slid straight to the painted crescent on its corner. It spelled out LOW WATER 4.12. Underneath, in a looping hand that was not his, it added: DON'T GO ON THE FLATS. He laughed and went out at 4.12 regardless, notebook under his arm.

The heron was standing in the shallows like a grey clerk when he reached the channel, and the wind swung round out of nowhere. The sea came back over the sand far faster than any table said it should. A heron lifted off the mud ahead of him, slow and deliberate, and he followed its wingbeats the way a man follows a sign, back toward the steps. Mrs Ogle always said the bird was the message. I only know the planchette was warm when I dusted it that night, and the pointer had come to rest on the moon.

Tobias paid his rent to the penny and left by the Thursday coach. Every spring since, the board has been found turned to face the window, and the moon on its corner has been rubbed bright as a coin. Mind the third stair on your way up. It's the only thing in this house that never lies to you.