Inspiring Tattoos - Lauren

I'm super excited today to invite Lauren from Belle Du Brighton to showcase her tattoos and tell us the story behind them. I love looking at tattoos, and I'm always so interested to find out the meanings behind them. So I'll allow Lauren to tell us about hers. 

"After discovering Almost Delightful, I was reading through the archives and really like the tattoo posts, but there hadn’t been one for a while, so I tweeted Sarah to say it was a shame she’d stopped... so I said I'd happily tell you all about mine! 

I have two tattoos on my back, the one at the bottom is a celtic knot with a purple diamond in it, which symbolises my Irish ancestry & an amethyst, which is my birthstone. I kind of regret getting this tattoo, as its just not as special as the others, I hardly ever show it to people, and its placement means nobody really sees it either. One day I'll design something that incorporates it to help to cover it up. The one at the top is an Egyptian Ankh, or ‘key of life’ with 5 little stars placed above it. I had spent some time in Egypt exploring the tombs and discovering more about Egypt's history, and many sources say that the symbol translates to protection, which I liked. The 5 stars symbolise all my grandparents and my uncle, who have all passed away.

I have both my feet tattooed, I got them done about 6 months apart and the first was on my left foot, and is the Comedy & Tragedy masks. To me it symbolises that life goes both ways and is generally a bit of a drama! I also danced (for fun and competitively), sung and played instruments throughout my teen years, and I decided on this tattoo to remind me of that part of my life too. When I decided I wanted the other foot done, I chose the Latin for “peace, hope and freedom” as I try to keep these three things as my priorities in life. The placement of the words run just along the outer edge, so when I'm wearing flip-flops all the wording is visible. If I could change anything about this tattoo, its that I would have used my own hand writing instead of a script font (although my writing is atrocious so to be honest it’s probably best as it is!) The feet hurt more than any other part of the body, for me anyway!

The tattoo I got most recently is of two love birds sitting on my left wrist, with a heart between them. I got engaged this summer, and got this tattoo shortly after, so this symbolises ‘us’ without being too cheesy or obvious.

As I live in Brighton tattoos are really not frowned upon, but I still am very careful about the placement of my tattoos, and they can all be easily covered with tights/a shirt with a collar and sleeves, should it be necessary! I’ve found the tattoos on my feet draw a fair amount of interest, and ‘didn’t it hurts!?’

My advice to anyone who is thinking about it is to decide what and wear you want it, and then wait for a month. If you still want it then, then go for it! Getting a tattoo should really not be done on a whim, and especially not when drunk. A friend of a friend got really drunk in Cardiff, and woke up the next day with ‘GGGrrrrrr!’ tattooed on his right bum cheek. Not something you’d want to tell (or show!) your grandkids!

If you have questions at all please feel free to get in contact, I'm happy to help if I can!"

Thank you Lauren for this great post, I loved reading about how you got the tattoos and the meanings behind them. If anyone wants to know more about Lauren, you can visit her blog here. 

In other news I also did a guest post on Danielle's blog a few days ago about photography, which you can visit here. 

xo