Black and grey fine line tattoo of two swallows on the shoulders, joined by draped bead chains across the upper chest.

Swallows and bead chain across chest

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

Two stippled swallows sit on the shoulders, with their wings spread outward and their tails extended toward the arms. Three fine-line chains of beads loop across the collarbone and chest, with beaded drops hanging at the centre and near the right shoulder. The shading is soft grey and built from dots, and the image is cropped to the upper body with a floral, ruffled garment in the lower frame.

Fine line Dotwork Shoulder Chest Swallow Bird Necklace Chain Bead

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

You have the oven door open before St Agnes's clock finishes striking five, and the first tray of tins is already sweating on the rack by the back window. The yard outside is still the colour of a bruise. Your uncle Teodor used to say the swallows nested under the eaves to keep an eye on the bakers, and you never believed him until that spring, when the pair came skimming down Tanner's Lane at roof height, tails forked like a pair of shears, and landed on the sill as if they had been booked.

Keep reading

The Halloran cake is due at nine. Three tiers of lemon sponge under white fondant, and on top of it you have been piping sugar beads since midnight, one at a time, forty to a chain, three chains, the drops at the ends fat and pale. Your wrist aches the way it only does before dawn. Mrs Halloran's daughter wants it to look like a necklace someone has left on the cake by mistake, and you have spent two hours making sure no one could tell the difference.

The swallows walk along the sill with their small grey heads cocked. One of them takes a crumb from the board, then another, as bold as a regular. You think of the chain on the Halloran cake and of the hours you have strung into this bakery, one day after another, each one perfectly round and none of them yours to keep. Your back is sore. The sky over the roofs has gone the thin colour of milk.

You break off a corner of the sponge, the one that didn't rise straight, and set it on the sill. The nearer swallow hops forward, takes it in its beak, and is gone over the lane before you can decide whether you are pleased.