White ink mandala tattoo with floral and paisley motifs covering the upper arm and shoulder of a woman in a white vest top.

White ink mandala on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large mandala design with a central rosette, scrolling paisley shapes and fine dotted details covers the upper arm and reaches towards the shoulder. The tattoo is rendered in pale white ink with thin, even linework, so it shows as a raised-looking pattern against the skin. The photograph is taken outdoors in soft daylight with a shallow focus on the arm, and the person's face is not shown.

Upper arm Shoulder Mandala Paisley Flower Swirl Dotwork

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

The flour had worked into the creases of Nell's knuckles before the lamp was lit, and she was still brushing it off when her grandmother set the first loaf on the peel. "Centre first," Gran said. "Quick and sharp, like you mean it. Then the petals, then the curls, or the crust won't lift and the whole thing comes out looking like a dropped hat."

Keep reading

No one in Holloway Lane bought a loaf from the Prewitt bakery without that pattern across the top. Gran said her mother had cut it, and her mother's mother before that: a ring of petals at the heart, with scrolls running off the edge like a stream finding its way down a hill. Nell had learned it the way she learned the weight of water, by getting it wrong and eating the evidence. Outside, frost furred the glass, and the ovens ticked as they came up to heat.

The winter the mill flooded, the flour came in grey and damp, and the loaves rose sullen and flat. Gran sat down on a sack and said nothing for a long time. Then she took the knife from Nell's hand and scored a rosette so fine that the cut lines stood pale off the crust, like frost on a hedge. "I only remembered how your grandad held the blade," she said. "Not the mill, not the flour. Just his grip."

Nell cut the next morning on her own, slow and careful, and when the sun came up over the chimneys the window ledge held a row of loaves, each one marked with the same white ring. A man in a carter's coat stopped to look, traced a scroll with one floury finger, and said it looked like someone had drawn it in milk. Gran, behind the counter, did not look up from the till. "Good," she said. "Now the petals."