Flash design of pink, purple and blue butterflies with curling ribbon swirls and small stars on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterflies and swirls flash sheet

Colour · Flash

The sheet shows five butterflies in pink, purple and blue, with wings drawn in detailed linework and soft gradient shading. Curling ribbon swirls and small star shapes fill the space around them. The design sits on a plain white background, with the butterflies arranged in a loose diagonal composition.

Butterfly Swirl Ribbon Star

Find an artist for this

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

Dear Peg, the ribbon van finally came through Thornbury on Tuesday, the one with painted swallows on its doors, and Mr Aldous sold me three yards of silk the colour of a bruised plum for the price of two. I haven't told Mother. I'm writing to you because you're the only one who won't ask what I wanted it for.

Keep reading

I'd meant to make a sash for the Whit Monday dance, but on Thursday I found Grandad's old tin of paints under the stairs, the ones he used for the church hall signs before his eyes went. I sat on the back step with the silk pegged to the washing line and painted five butterflies, one after another, blue first, then the pinks bleeding in through the wings like sunrise through a kitchen window. Beside each one I put a curl of ribbon, the way the wind lifts a hem, and then a little star, because the paint kept spilling over and I couldn't bear to wipe it away.

Mother came out with the kettle and stopped dead. She didn't say a word for a long while. Then she asked whether the big blue one was meant to be Grandad, and I said no, it was meant to be the one that got away from the mill. She laughed so hard she had to sit down on the step beside me, kettle still in hand, and tea went all over my shoes.

The dance is Saturday. I've decided to wear it anyway, pinned at the shoulder, and if anyone asks where I got it I'll say a travelling man in a van. It's near enough the truth. Write back soon and tell me whether Ted Harker has finally asked you to the pictures, and whether you still think I'm daft.