Welcome to the wonderful world of mushrooms! This hugely diverse species has been used by humanity for thousands of years as a source of food, dye, medicine, and spiritual connection.

In the UK we celebrate Fungus Day on the 8th October, while our Aussie friends celebrate National Mushroom Day on the 15th. Either way, your spooky season celebrations can begin early with these fabulous fruiting fungi!

Come with us as we forage for mushroom tattoos from our talented sponsored artists!

Anshin Anshin & Bara Barawski - Simply Shrooms

Let’s start with some simply perfect mushrooms, and a quick fact about fungi: what we think of as “the mushroom” is only the fruit of the organism, so for every one you see, a complex network of mycelium is at play beneath! Anshin Anshin’s bold modern style of tattooing usually takes a more colourful form, but we love the purity of this blackwork piece with just a little stippling for across the cap and stem. Bara Barawski utilised his neo-traditional style to create these beautifully crooked, organic-looking grey-brown capped mushrooms on a background of pale blue.

Veda Ink & Joe Frost - Skulls and Shrooms

Mushrooms aren’t just good to eat – they’re also good at eating you! The mycelium network is highly efficient at using enzymes to decompose organic matter, recycling the nutrients for their own use, and they’ve been used to decompose human bodies. Veda Ink combined these psychedelic-looking mushrooms with a human skull to show both the effects of mushrooms on humans (represented by the open third eye) and the effects of humans on mushrooms (life-sustaining nutrients). Joe Frost’s neo-traditional piece combines mushrooms into the skull design as though they’re growing out of it, rather than through it, and incorporated a few varieties of the fruiting bodies.

Joanne Baker & Anthony Lennox - Frogs on Mushrooms

Although there’s no technical difference between mushrooms and toadstools, there is an interesting theory about where the name “toadstool” comes from: toads were associated with disease and poison, and people believed that any mushroom they sat on would inherit those traits! Joanne Baker’s watercolour frog on a mushroom looks far too polite to be poisonous, and with their wizard’s hat hopefully they can undo any magical ailments. We’re less sure about the character of Anthony Lennox’s neo-traditional frog on a mushroom - the swirling eyes and elephant disguise imply that they’re not quite in their right mind!

Cloto & Piotr Dedel - Gnomes on Shrooms

Unlike plants, mushrooms don’t need any light to grow – although if you’re planning on eating them for their vitamin D, you’d better hope they’ve had some kind of UV light! This mysterious gnome playing his two-pronged pipe must be from a reference piece to appear in two totally different tattoos – Cloto’s vibrant piece has him chilling under a collection of gently glowing mushrooms, while in Piotr Dedel’s darker, more realistic piece he’s sitting on a fly agaric toadstool with ferns behind him.

Jason James Smith & Thanks Aanderton - Not-so-fungis

One particularly upsetting fact about mushrooms coming in: they’re genetically closer to humans than they are plants. So it’s kind of perfect that these little mushroom dudes have been created! Jason James Smith has done a huge run of alternative and black metal mushrooms – here you can see them smoking pipes, practicing yoga, making s’mores and kicking up some autumn leaves. Thanks Aanderton created this excited little Amanita muscaria wielding two Psilocybe semilanceata - with those swirling eyes, it’s probably safe to say they’re tripping pretty hard!

Tiggy & Nicklas Wong - Creepy Creatures

Fungal networks can grow to massive sizes and survive for thousands of years! The largest living fungus is thought to be a honey fungus in the United States, which is estimated to be 2,400 years old and cover 2,200 acres of land. Tiggy’s neo-traditional Jackalope has certainly been eating some psychoactive shrooms and is now seeing through time and space, while Nicklas Wong’s colourful frog is growing mushrooms out of its back and mouth – not a particularly pleasant prospect for any creature.

Keely Glitters & Luiz Lacorte - Out of this World

Mushrooms are pretty alien as it is, but NASA has actually been working on sending them out into space! They found that not only do mushrooms grow incredibly well without the pressures of gravity, but that they enjoy being irradiated, and can turn that radiation into energy. Keely Glitters’ bold glittery style is at work with this happy alien piece – their eyes have become psychedelic flowers and multi-coloured mushrooms are springing out from their mind! Luiz Lacorte’s dramatic neo-traditional mushroom is dripping like the aliens from our nightmares, with long tendrils that look more like they’re going in than coming out…

Esmee Godfrey & Kati Berinkey - Third Eyes

Psychoactive mushrooms have been used by humans all over the world for thousands of years – and no wonder, when a good trip can make you laugh, hallucinate and mistake fantasy for reality! Esmee Godfrey’s black and grey trippy drippy mushroom features an open third eye looking to the stars – or maybe just rolling back in its cap – while Kati Berinkey’s bold colourful mushroom has an eye that looks clearly to the future.

Yomico Moreno & Samanta Annie - Alice in Mushroomland 

Alice in Wonderland has possibly one of the most famous representations of mushrooms, giving Alice the size-changing abilities she uses throughout the story – in real life, hallucinations from mushrooms can affect how the brain perceives size and distance! Yomico Moreno combined styles with his piece, placing the 1951 animated Alice and the Caterpillar against a photorealistic forest background featuring plenty of fly agaric, while Samanta Annie took on this colour realism piece from the 2010 Alice in Wonderland of the caterpillar smoking his hookah among mushrooms – both clear symbols of drug use!

Adrian de Largue & Debora Cherrys – The Last of Us

If you’ve played or seen The Last of Us, you’re probably already an expert in Cordyceps, the fungus that infects living insects and turns them into zombies – thankfully, they’ve not made it to mammals in real life just yet! Adrian de Largue’s blackwork Clicker piece shows the most advanced stage of the infected, where the flowering mushrooms have begun growing out of the victim’s brain. Debora Cherrys went for a more human angle, showing one half of Ellie and Joel’s faces in black and grey, divided by a rich variety of mushrooms in bright colours.

David Giersch & Nick Noonan - Local Shrooms

There are tens of thousands of mushrooms over the world, with plenty more to be discovered, and while mushroom identification can be a dangerous hobby, we’re willing to take a guess on these particular fungi! David Giersch brought together a colour realism raccoon with some thin purple mushrooms which we think are Laccaria amethystine, the amethyst deceiver; Nick Noonan works what must be the Entoloma hochstetteri – the sky-blue mushroom, found in New Zealand and India – into this native New Zealand-themed realism sleeve.

Whether you use mushrooms for their vitamin D, as a source of horror, or simply to feed your head, why not immortalise your favourite fungi with a mushroom tattoo today? Share your toadstool tattoos with us on Instagram and Facebook, and let us know whose piece has inspired you most!