I wanted to share with you some of the nicer heart-and-love-themed tattoos I’ve gotten recently. For a lot of people tattoos are a way of wearing their heart on their sleeve quite literally, a way of externalizing and sharing the way they feel with the world. Some people write poetry, some people get tattooed, and I suppose in a lot of ways many people’s tattoos are poetry.

Let me start with Selena‘s wonderful little “two sparrows pinning a patchwork heart”. It’s not quite finished yet, but what you see so far is by Joey Wallace at Karmic Tattoo in McDonough, GA.

I get a lot of anatomical heart diagrams indicating where various emotions and other concepts lie. This one for example is on Jen by Anji at HPP Ink in Eugene, Oregon. I assume those are transdermals by the way (but someone correct me if I’m wrong and it’s a surface bar):

Here’s another one by Rod Graybill at Dexterity Tattoo in Lancaster, PA on IAM:she rarely flies. The heart tattoo gallery I mentioned earlier contains quite a few other variations if I recall correctly.

This next one is on IAM:girl-23 who lives in Canada but is doing the long distance relationship thing with her boyfriend in Florida… That’s never easy, and she got this postcard tattoo done by Scooter at Atomic Tattoos in Lakeland, FL while visiting him this past December.

I’ve seen Link and Zelda couples (and siblings) tattoos before, and they’re always so sweet and nerdy. This pair was done by Billy at Temptation Tattoo in Denver, CO.

Finally, a heart that’s maybe not doing quite so well. IAM:LustKill had this tortured heart done by Dan Craft at Jersey Devil in Blackwood, NJ.

As always, please don’t copy any of these designs, and I hope you’ll take the time to email me your tattoo (high res pictures please) for BME at [email protected] — don’t forget to be sure to tell me the artist credit and anything else I need to know.