Neo-traditional tattoo of a pair of red glitter ruby slippers with blue highlights and a star on an upper arm, with banner lettering above.

Ruby slippers tattoo on an arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A pair of red, glitter-textured ruby slippers with blue highlights and small white stars sits across the middle of the arm, set against a pale, sparkling backdrop. Bold black outlines, smooth shading and a banner with partial lettering frame the design, which fills most of the frame. The palette is mainly red and blue with grey shading, and the photo is taken at a close angle with denim visible at the edge.

Neo-trad Upper arm Shoe Star Banner Lettering

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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 Maureen, I know you said I'd lost the plot when I told the vicar the bride would walk up the aisle in red, but the shoes are finished and I want you to see them before Saturday. Eileen came into the shop on Tuesday with a shoebox under one arm and a flask of sherry in her handbag, and she tipped the pair out onto my cutting table like she was emptying a purse. The heels were cracked and the sole of the left one had come away at the toe. She'd bought them at a jumble in Margate for a pound, she said, and her gran had worn them to the Palace in 1961.

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I spent three evenings on them. I stripped the old lacquer, rebuilt the heels with cork, and then I went at the uppers with a tin of red glitter I'd been saving for the panto. It catches the lamp when you move, like sugar on a cake. For the shading I used a navy silk I had left over from a naval uniform, so the fold of each vamp looks blue in the shadow. Where the light sits I pressed in tiny white sequins, a little scatter of stars. The lining I stitched with the words from the old film, in gold thread, on the inside of the strap where nobody will see unless they're looking for it.

So she came in for the fitting yesterday and stood on my box to check the height. Then she asked me quietly whether I thought they'd look silly with a white dress. I said I thought she'd have to wear them to find out. She looked at me a long time, Maureen, the way my mother used to look at a hem she couldn't believe was straight, and then she laughed. I'll see you Saturday. Bring the good camera.