flower power

So, I always thought I had a little bit of "hippy" in me.  Perhaps now it's on me.  I wanted a new tattoo, so I got one.  I've been wanting flowers around my Stokes Coat of Arms for a long time now.  I wanted traditional flowers in terms of classic tattoo styling.  So after discussion with the always amazing and awesomely scholarly Max Brown at Revolution Tattoo, we decided upon a mix between "folk art" and traditional flower tattoos.

Why flowers?  Because flowers are beautiful and so is the family I was born into (and will so make on my own).  I wanted to honor the tradition and beauty of my family.  It's also cool that the flowers Max and I chose came from German settlers (my dad's family is Germanic, and my mom's family were real-life American settlers - the symbolism works nicely in the end).

I actually wanted to include 18th century agricultural hand tools, like scythes or pitchforks, or something that spoke to the life of an American settler, but Dana told me not to "come back with anything sharp: no knives, no daggers, and no Grim Reaper tools."  Ah well - can't win 'em all.

This flower is taken from a Pennsylvania German "fraktur" painting.

This leaf and the flower below are more "traditional" flower tattoos.

Go Hawks!  Go Tattoos!

Booyah.