Needing some new ink

Well, I have been itching to get some more ink. I know tattoos are are very polarizing subject. People either love tattoos or that hate them, there doesn’t seem to be a nice easy medium. I remember telling my Dad I wanted to get a tattoo when I was younger and he did his best to talk me out of it. He told me that they hurt, then the classic “think about what it will look like when you are old and saggy”, and when he saw that wasn’t working he turned to disease and pestilence. Tattoo artists and shops are dirty, you can catch a disease from dirty needles, and then finally “they won’t tattoo you because you’re a hemopheliac”. So needless to say I never brought it up to him again, instead a few days after I turned 18, I drove myself up to Physical Graffiti and got tattooed. It was months before my Pop saw that I had a tattoo, I was sitting at my Grandma’s house and he walked in and said I’m glad you didn’t get a tattoo, and my Grandma blew me in and told him I already had one. I remember he was irritated but he was also smiling because he knew I had to do things my own way.

Since then I have gotten a few more pieces of ink. But lately I have been feeling very sentimental about my daughter and want to get a piece that signifies her. For those of you without tattoos, its hard to explain but its fairly common to have ink that represents family members. So A bird’s name actually means bird like/graceful, so I would like to get a classic sparrow/swallow over my heart on my chest, then with her name on the wing or below it. I know it sounds very similar to L Bird’s ink, but I want the same thing but not a matching sparrow.

I want something feminine for A Bird, but not too girly, you know what I mean. So I went searching for some designs, these are just a few that are along the lines of what I would like:

  With different colors, of course. This is a classic design.

A little more masculine.

I like this one too, but it’s a little too paisley/hippie to me.

What do you think???