Small colour fine line tattoo of a cartoon house held aloft by a bunch of balloons, on the outer ankle.

Small house lifted by balloons on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Colour · Photo

A small cartoon house with a red roof and a chimney rises on a cluster of multicoloured balloons, shown on the outer ankle. The linework is thin and dark, with flat fills in blue, yellow, pink and red. The photo is taken from a side angle against a blurred indoor background, with the tattoo placed near the top of the frame.

Fine line Ankle House Balloon Cartoon Chimney

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

Edie had tied the last string to the chimney pot just before the wind got up, and now she stood on an upturned bucket at the end of the allotment, watching the little house strain against its strings. Seven balloons, she had counted, though the blue one had already slipped its knot and drifted over the leeks. Her grandad's shed sat behind her with its door hanging off one hinge, and the runner beans he had sown in April were climbing their canes as if they had somewhere important to be.

Keep reading

"You'll have it over the hedge," called Mrs Okafor from plot nine, not looking up from her cabbages. She had said the same about the garden gnome, the wheelbarrow and, once, a man's good hat. Edie didn't answer. She had built the house from a shoebox and a cereal packet, painted the roof with the last of Grandad's red gloss, and cut two windows at the front, one yellow and one pink, because he always said a house should have a bit of cheek.

The wind swung round to the north. The balloons pulled, the bucket rocked, and for one long moment the whole thing lifted a hand's width off the wigwam of canes where she had fixed it. Edie reached up and caught the pink string, the way Grandad used to catch her collar when she was small and wanted to chase the ice cream van across the road.

"Not yet," she told the house. She wound the string twice around the tallest cane and tied it off with a knot he had taught her, the one that holds until you ask it not to. Mrs Okafor finally glanced over, nodded once, and went back to her cabbages. Above them the house bobbed, patient and red-roofed, and the beans kept climbing towards it.