Black fine-line lace-style floral tattoo with roses and leaves covering the upper arm, with a partial anchor visible near the shoulder under a white top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black lace-style floral sleeve on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A fine-line tattoo of roses, leaves and lace-like rosettes hangs down the upper arm, with dotted stems and trailing lines below the flowers. A partly visible anchor sits near the shoulder beneath the sleeve of a white top. The work is in black ink with no colour, and the design fills the right side of the frame against a plain pale background.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Lace Rose Flower Leaf Dot Anchor Floral Sleeve

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pass me the pillow, love, and mind the pins. Your grandfather thought lace was something you bought in a shop, like tinned peaches. He was a sailor out of Lyme and he judged everything by whether it would hold in a gale. So when he came home from the Newfoundland run with a wooden box of scraps and asked what I'd make of them, I told him the sea had nothing on a good pattern.

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Those scraps were thread from a ship's chandler, hemp and linen with a tar stink still in them. I worked them on this pillow through the long nights while the harbour lamps went out one by one. Roses first, because he wanted roses, though he'd never say so. Then the rosettes, round as ships' buttons, and leaves like the ones that grew over our cottage wall. I set dots along the stems where the pins had gone in, one for every night he was late back.

The winter he didn't come home, the anchor was the last thing left on the cushion, and I couldn't bring myself to sew it. Then one March morning a boy ran up the cliff path shouting that the Brightwater had limped into port with a bent mast and a man aboard who could hardly stand. It was your grandfather. A shipmate had inked an anchor on his shoulder with a needle and soot so he'd not forget the way home, and when I saw it I laughed until I cried, because he'd copied my cushion onto his skin.

So when people ask why I tie sailors' knots into my lace, I tell them the sea was the only thing that ever taught me patience. Now go and fetch the kettle, and mind the step. It's slippier than my temper.