Traditional style flash design of a teapot pouring into a teacup, with a red rose, green leaves and banners reading WHEN IN DOUBT DRINK TEA.

Teapot pouring tea beside a rose

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A teapot pours a stream of brown tea into a patterned cup on a saucer, with a full red rose and green leaves beside it. Two banners carry the words WHEN IN DOUBT above and DRINK TEA below, and wisps of steam rise at the top left. Bold black outlines and saturated red, green and blue fills sit on a soft cream background.

Traditional Teapot Teacup Tea Rose Leaves Banner Lettering Steam Saucer

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

Ada had been arguing with the lock gates since six, and the boat had been sulking since Stourport. She stood on the front deck of the narrowboat Patience with her hands jammed in her coat pockets, watching the water sink away beneath her in the chamber, when the lock-keeper's boy came running down the towpath carrying a blue-and-white teapot wrapped in a tea towel. His mum, he said, had sent it along because Ada looked like she needed it.

Keep reading

It was the pot that had gone missing off the Kidderminster cart in the spring. Ada took it without a word and lifted the lid, which rattled like a loose tooth. Inside lay a sprig of red rose pressed flat between two paper napkins, and a folded note in pencil that read: when in doubt, drink tea. She laughed for the first time in a week, a short bark that sent a moorhen flapping off the reeds. Then she lit the ring on the little stove, filled the kettle from the cut, and sat on the coal box while it ticked and began to steam.

The gates groaned open. Ada poured her first cup into the mismatched china she had carried since her mother's wedding, watched the brown stream curl over the rim, and let the boat drift out into the long reach of the canal with the rose tucked behind her ear.