Red bow with white polka dots and a black outline tattooed on the upper shoulder, beside a black bra strap.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red polka dot bow on shoulder

Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A bow shape filled with red ink and white polka dots, edged in a bold black outline, sits on the upper shoulder blade area. The flat colour fills and thick outline give the design a simple, graphic look, with the two wings slightly angled. The black bra strap runs diagonally beside the tattoo, and a knitted garment shows at the lower edge of the frame.

Shoulder Bow Polka dot Ribbon

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

Now then, pull that chair up to the stove, because this business started with a bolt of cloth that came off the Leeds train on a wet Tuesday in 1953, and nobody in Fennick Cross had ordered it. Mrs Pardoe kept the haberdashery on the corner by the chapel, and when she tore the brown paper she found red cotton with white spots the size of a farthing, and a note from the mill saying sorry for the muddle, keep it or send it back at your own cost.

Keep reading

She kept it, of course. She was a woman who kept everything. Within a week half the town's girls were queuing at her counter asking for a yard of it, and Mrs Pardoe, who had never once let a customer leave empty-handed, cut them each a bow from the offcuts. Little wings of red with the spots stitched flat, and a twist of black thread through the middle to hold them. Maud Sealey wanted hers for the Whitsun dance at the Co-op hall, and she pinned it to her coat strap the way the picture-house women had taught everyone to do that year.

The dance was rained off. Maud stood under the awning outside the shop with the bow still pinned on, waiting for a lad from the bakery who never came. Mrs Pardoe brought out a cup of tea and a pair of scissors, looked at the bow, and said it was the only thing in the parish worth looking at that afternoon. Maud laughed and went home with it still pinned on. If you walk up past the chapel field on a fine morning, you may still see a woman pushing a pram with a red bow on her cardigan, and she will tell you the cloth was a mistake that turned out well.