On the back of my right hand I have a pattern of Celtic knots in blue and yellow. My mother thought I was left-handed so she and my aunties inked them into my right(turns out I'm ambidex). Great-grandparents, grandparents, great-uncles & -aunts and all their friends had have tattoos so it's something trad. Faces, hands, wrists, collarbones, ankles seemed to be favourite sites. Chains and knots; stylized animals, birds, snakes; delicate freestyle flowers were the artworks of choice with blue, gold, and silver predominating colours interspersed with red and green. The tattoos are holding up well, then so are my old folks. It's phased out a bit. I was at the tail-end of the last generation that had tattoos as a matter of course. My younger sister and cousins have gotten a wider variety of tattoos and sites as young adults and sometimes with modern technology. Both my ears are pierced once in each lobe just like all my female relatives. The men usually have only one ear pierced any-old-where but usually the lobe. Some of the GenY'ers have multiple piercings and are musing about further ones. I can't see the attraction myself.