For those who are interested in tattooing, tattoos can be considered a patchwork of memories, relationships, and experiences. The tattoos that you wear represent what’s important to you.
Mother-daughter tattoos are another opportunity to celebrate the relationship between two people. However, there are challenges to consider when planning these tattoos, such as making sure they look good together but also on each person individually. In addition, the tattoo artist will need information about how you would like the tattoos designed.
Here is some advice on how to plan mother daughter tattoos that suit you both.
1. Find your shared connection
It’s important to find a design that means something to you as a pair. Some designs are based around an object or memory, which can include a family heirloom or an item associated with your relationship. Others may be drawn from a shared interest, like music or sports.
Two families I know decided to base their mother-daughter tattoos around a shared object: coffee cups. One family had chosen to commemorate visiting home during the holidays; another family talked for hours about their lives while sitting on the couch, sipping coffee together. For other families, the tattoos were a shared favorite flower — daisies. Or it was a peace sign centered around their shared commitment to inner peace and peaceful living.
So what do we choose as our shared connection? Perhaps it’s a particular song that played during a meaningful moment of our lives. Or perhaps it’s an old house, or even a book we both love. Something familiar to us and one another. But something that feels like it truly belongs to both of us.
2. Think about identical, complementary and variation-based design ideas
There are three basic ways to go about designing a tattoo with another individual:
Identical designs: If both individuals share a preference for the same kind of images, such as stars, then creating the same tattoo for both of you may feel right. It can help if you vary the image in some small way, like different arrangements of stars or slightly different colorings, to give each a unique twist. A common arrangement is two stars for the younger person and five stars for the older person, with two of the older person’s five stars filled in to match the younger’s version.
Complementary images: If you don’t want to have identical tattoos, you might instead create complementary tattoos that make sense together, yet complete on their own. Think of sun and moon, key and lock, wave and mountain, compass and star. They’re often seen in pairs, yet still make sense alone.
Variations of one motif: This method allows you to keep the shared motif, but gives you space to tweak the composition to fit your own taste. You could create one shared design anchor and add a variable component. You can adjust framing, scale, texture, color accents, or even add a small object within the design. Just remember that this method should allow for the two versions to be visually distinct enough to appeal to both of you, yet cohesive enough to reflect the relationship between you both.
Clean design3. Adapt the shared connection to each individual’s patchwork collection
Tattoos are personal. We all wear our own collection of images that tell a story about who we are. As part of a mother-daughter tattoo pair, you’ll want to adapt your new tattoos into your own patchwork.
To begin with, you’ll want to assess the rest of each person’s tattoo collection to determine how much space you have. Think about what the rest of the tattoo looks like. Does it feature more artwork that fills up the surrounding area? What does it mean to you? How does the placement affect the open space?
If you both want the same tattoo, discuss with your artist how the existing tattoos will interact with the proposed new tattoos. Think about whether the new tattoos will live comfortably within the existing tattoos. Talk about proportions, scale and surrounding open skin. Will this placement work on each person’s skin? Are there areas where either of you don’t want to place any tattoos?
Placement will play a role in this assessment, because it affects what else is nearby, including skin tone and nearby tattoos. Vertical calf pieces will usually have less available open space than a wider collarbone piece. The artwork must be redrawn accordingly, because the proportions change. Ultimately, work with the artist on individual composition decisions. Each individual makes the choice on how the tattoos will look on their bodies, while keeping the shared motif consistent.
4. Placement is ultimately an individual visibility choice
You may not want everyone at the party to see your tattoos, just as you may not want the whole world to know about your favorite song. Your tattoos’ placement is largely up to you. There are visible placements (the wrist) and quieter ones (the rib, ankle or inner arm). However, if your tattoos are intended to join together, you’ll probably want to bring them in for a joint stencil appointment.
Ask the artist to check both interlocking stencils in the same appointment. Check them in a natural standing posture, with relaxed arms and slight rotation. Have the artist adjust for differences in your bodies, and assess alignment beyond a posed photograph. So it’s possible that you won’t have the perfect pose in mind for your joint session, but you can take photos to review and use as a guide.
Clean design5. Assess handwriting, fingerprint hearts and tiny flowers
Handwriting, fingerprint hearts and tiny flowers can all be challenging to recreate accurately and beautifully. If you’ve chosen a piece that includes these elements, ask yourself some questions:
What kind of details would you prefer? Tiny, delicate letters? Big, bold block script? How do you expect these details to evolve over time?
Do you like spacing in the words? Do you prefer the letters close together or far apart?
Are there comparable healed examples of the tattoo that will appear on your body? Are there examples that look like they’ll look once they’ve been healed?
If you have a particular letter or word in mind, present it to the tattoo artist with a hand written card or letter, or a high-resolution scan of it, and ask the artist to show you how they’d render the design as readable as it ages. Tiny flowers can be assessed by asking the artist to evaluate how the detail would look once it has healed and how it fits within the design.
The raising.wildflowers.tattoo Instagram page caption describes an example of a healed fingerprint-heart tattoo. Other pages showcase a variety of similar styles, so if you’re unsure of what will work, you can refer back to these examples.
6. Create a consultation brief
Once you decide on your design idea and how to express it, the next step is assembling the brief that the tattoo artist will use to design your tattoos. It should define exactly what your connection is and what you are flexible about.
We can compile a ‘brief’ of sorts, where both tattoos’ references are presented together, explaining why we chose the images and what they mean to us. We then identify the shared memory or whatever reference it is, and describe it as best as possible. Then, the rough sketches or phone photos are added. Then, the brief goes on to explain the style of each person’s tattoos, the placement, the visibility, and anything else that is relevant to the tattooing process itself. We add the patchwork context, explaining what else we have tattooed, and what available space exists for each wearer.
This helps the artist understand the context of the tattoos and what you’re looking for, while allowing them to refine the compositions. Use the same agreed brief as an aid to coordinate separate artists. We can agree upon the brief before meeting our artists, and use it as a coordination aid to help both tattoos match and work together. The execution of the tattoos might end up being very different, but they can both start with the same brief.