The carnation is a beautiful bloom most often associated with positive feelings of love, affection, gratitude, and admiration. The carnation flower differs from more traditional flower tattoo designs and comes in a range of colors to support strong feelings.
Carnations go back to Diana in Greek Mythology and also play a part in early Christianity. It was said that when the Virgin Mary cried during the crucifixion of Jesus, that carnations grew from her fallen tears.
This vision of Mary – the archetype for a mother’s love – prompted the link between carnations and love strongly, however, there are more associations this beautiful flower can deploy in body art.
Read on for some brilliant flower tattoo designs that can help you in deciding to get your next piece of ink.
These carnation floral art pieces will look great in your home office, living room, kitchen, craft room, hobby lobby, and they will be nice gifts for Carnation flower lovers. –> Click the images below to learn more!
? Best Carnation Reed Diffuser
Fresh not overpowering – “Wow, I really like this. The scent is great, possibly even too strong if you flip all the reeds at once. But the silk flowers with it make it uniquely pretty. I have it on a table in my office and it sits there like a little decoration. I bought two other scents for girls in my office and then one for my mom too.”
? Best Carnation Floral Wall Stickers
Beautiful, realistic and easy to apply – “Good quality, easy to apply and fast shipping. Make sure you order the correct size I made the mistake of assuming I bought the larger size and never checked the size option, but I still liked how they look on my walls.”
? Best Carnation Flowers Mold For Soap, Wax, Candles
Works really well and creates a great soap or wax mold for candles! – “The mold is good quality and thickness. Pay attention to size…. the end product is small but as intricate as shown. I boil (wash) in soapy water for a couple minutes and dry in my toaster oven at 375 degrees for about 15 mins with no probs. I accidently dried at 450 degrees once and even though the mold initially looked like it melted down it retained the original shape once cooled. No need to seal wick; does not leak.”
? Best Artificial Carnation Flowers For Home Decor
Pretty and they add a great touch to the space – “The pink carnations look remarkably real from afar. They’re a pretty pink and kind of a hard paper texture. I fluffed them up a little upon arrival. The sprigs of eucalyptus add some texture. The glass vase is nice as is the leather strap decor but I like it better plain personally. Adds a nice pop of color to my laundry room. I would recommend this nice, small flower decor. Arrived safely packaged.”
? Best Artificial Carnation Floral Arrangement
Just drop in a vase and arrange a little – “These flowers are very pretty. They are pastel so look great in darker rooms. I just put them in a vase and arranged them a little bit, mostly just pull down the parts I wanted to hang down and just running my fingers through the others to fluff them up after being shipped. Easy and look great..”
? Best Flower Tattoos Temporary For Women
Great Inexpensive Pretty Tats. – “They stay on for a long time if you wash gently when showering and they are so easy to apply. I love them. I wanted a tattoo but I am diabetic and didn’t want to risk infection and or amputation so these are nice. Also I have commitment issues and I can change my mind and do different designs.”
? Best Flower Tattoo Marker
Such Fun Creating Tattoos And Great Quality!!! – “I bought this item for my family and it’s so great for temporary tattoos and easy to create them!!! I love the colors and quality 🙂 My children have had so much fun with them as well:)”
? Best Flower Tattoo Oil
I LOVE THIS STUFF! – “My fiance was talked into buying this stuff by a sweet older lady when he got his haircut once and he never told me about it. He was applying it to his beard and his tattoos. One day he randomly told me to put it on my tattoos because he thought I’d be obsessed with the smell… I was.
The smell had me so curious as to what this magical stuff was and on top of that it made my skin incredibly smooth ! I have an allergy to some tattoo ink so my tattoos were raised, fairly itchy, and even some of the color pulled. Just a few weeks of using this oil(and NOT even everyday) and they didn’t itch once AND I have zero raised areas now. Win.
The best part about this stuff is I got even more curious and started putting on my semi fried ends after straightening my hair thinking if it smoothes out beards why not course hair ? I hit the nail right on the head. Made my hair SO soft, manageable and smelling amazing. I get so many compliments and I legit do a sales pitch to ANYONE who will listen about this stuff. I am a customer FOR LIFE.”
Birds, Bees, & Butterflies Tattoos
Source: @jasonallenaz(artist) via Instagram
There’s tremendous symbolic meaning to each January birth flower tattoo. The cardinal bird combines with the carnation as the State symbols of Ohio, whilst the butterfly broken into puzzle pieces by the skilled tattoo artist has symbolic meaning with autism – matching beautifully with the love a carnation signifies.
I really enjoy how the different colors expressed in these carnation tattoos show different aspects; purple carnations imply a certain impulsivity, a dark red carnation with the woman’s ideal of a mother’s pure love. And pink carnations are most often associated with strong feelings of gratitude and thankfulness.
Color Carnation Tattoos
These beautiful tattoo designs aren’t short of symbolism either. Linking the purple ribbon for cancer or matching the color with the script as a display of faith are great details for a simple flower meaning.
I think the third watercolor tattoo is a truly beautiful design. The looser use of watercolor yellow (sunflower) and red (carnation) has a tremendous effect on the slashing line drawing of outlines and stems.
Delicate Flower Tattoo Designs
Source: @ray10159 via Instagram
Source: @yokgenabe via Instagram
These carnation tattoos show off the beauty and individuality of the petals whether depicted with color or in sensation black and gray. The undulation of each petal allows for some beautifully precise color shifts and allows for sweet wavy black ink linework.
My favorite piece offers a precise mix of negative space, deep red carnation coloring, and beautifully worked green stem/script mix are a masterful display of tattoo design and delivery.
Innovative Black and Gray Floral Tattoo Designs
I love how these black and gray carnation flower tattoos switch the flowing sensibilities of color display and reproduction for extremely out-there concepts that offer brilliant use of gradient shading.
Putting the flower images within a bottle with a headless dude, using an almost perfect skull for a stylish floral centerpiece, or having carnations grow from out of an anatomically correct heart are tremendous style choices that make for great alternative tattoo design. Utilizing white ink highlights doesn’t hurt the final product either.
Linework Flower Tattoo Designs
The natural shape of a carnation flower creates brilliant opportunities to play with wavy outlines, line thicknesses, or even the type of linework inked into the flower tattoo. These examples show off the cool linework that a tattoo artist can incorporate without even needing gradient shading or application of color.
Neo-Traditional Flower Tattoos
These neo pieces offer similar symbolic meaning, use of color, and even technical application to some of the previous tattoo designs, they just turn up the amplifier to ten. Brighter, richer colors, weirder image choices, thicker outlines, and bolder design.
My favorite is the fuck cancer carnation tattoo. The message is clear, the ink is amazing, and as a full shin piece of body art, the tattoo artist has crafted top quality design work.
Carnation Tattoo Designs
Source: @alecscraciun(artist) via Instagram
This final quartet of carnation tattoo examples shows the use of various technical aspects rounding off each design. They show a great application of space, shape, and highlighting options to create finalized pieces of body art.
I love how the second tattoo uses negative space to frame weaponry with a thick black outline while offering great, strafing shadow work and white highlights for the larger central flower. These techniques do a wonderful job of taking a simple image and imbuing it with skilled flourishes to make an exceptionally pretty flower tattoo.
And remember, if you’re unsure if a carnation, chrysanthemum, lotus flower, daisy, cherry blossom or daffodil is the right floral tattoo design for you, take the opportunity to get a quality temporary tattoo, and take your possible ink for a test drive.
Carnation Tattoo FAQs
What do carnation tattoos mean?
A carnation tattoo is most often associated with positive feelings of love, affection, and admiration. These strong feelings help it as a design, used in a collage or as a single minimal tattoo.
They are heavily linked to notions of motherly love, as in Christianity it was said that when Jesus died on the cross carnations grew from where the Virgin Mary’s tears fell.
The carnation is January’s birth flower – and are also linked to the Sagittarius Zodiac sign – so it can also be the perfect ink to symbolize these periods during the year. The Red carnation is also traditionally used to commemorate a woman’s 1st wedding anniversary.
What do different color carnations mean?
Carnations display great variety in their shading:
- Dark red carnations offer love and affection.
- A pink carnation signals gratitude.
- A Light red carnation is a bloom to depict admiration.
- A white carnation flower represents innocence, purity, and luck.
- A Yellow carnation means disappointment.
- Purple carnations are linked to impulsiveness and volatility.
Most colors are positively associated with strong feelings of positivity and thankfulness, and can be utilized in anything from a tiny carnation tattoo to a larger combination piece of ink
What did the carnation symbolize in Greek Mythology?
The scientific name of the carnation is Dianthus caryophyllus and has most often been linked with the myth of Diana, the Greek Goddess of the Hunt who plucked out the eyes of an innocent shepherd.
As the myth goes, Diana was returning from a hunting trip empty-handed when she came across a shepherd playing his flute and tending his flock.
Blaming his music for spoiling her hunting, the Goddess attacked the poor shepherd and plucked out his eyes. Where the eyes fell, red carnations grew in their stead to signify the shedding of innocent blood.