Black line drawing of a butterfly with flowers, leaves and berries arranged in a corner, shown as a botanical tattoo design rather than on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly and flowers corner design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A black outline drawing of a butterfly with its wings open, set among flower heads, leaves, berry sprigs and small buds that trail towards the lower corners. The linework is bold and even, with simple inner detailing on the wings and petals and no shading. The design is shown in black on white, with the main motif sitting on the right and the foliage framing the left and bottom edges.

Botanical Butterfly Flower Leaves Berry Sprig

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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

Ruth had been inking the same corner for three days when Mr Anstey leaned over the counter and said the Women's Institute wanted something lighter for the spring bazaar. She did not argue. She sat under the green-shaded lamp at the back of Anstey's Fancy Goods in Marlow Cross and went on drawing, because the thing on her paper was not finished yet. Stems ran in from the bottom edge like the strokes of a letter, and the butterfly rested on the right, where the eye naturally came to rest.

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Her sister had posted a sampler from Leeds, the one with the crooked cross-stitch rose, and Ruth had copied its berry sprigs from memory. The butterfly she had not copied from anything. It had come to her on the bus home, when a red admiral crossed the windscreen, dipped over the hedge and was gone. She drew it at the first chance with its wings held wide, every edge in one unbroken line, so the ink would sit clean and not bleed on the rollers of the duplicator.

Mr Anstey saw it on Thursday and frowned at the largest wing. "Too much butterfly, Miss Hollis. Nobody wants a thing on the cloth that might fly off." He wanted the flowers alone. She said nothing all afternoon. That evening she took the sheet home, traced the wings onto a card blank, and pricked the outline with a darning needle so the stencil would hold.

On Saturday the bazaar stall sold out of pillowcases by eleven. Ruth kept the card in her coat pocket and never showed it to anyone. At each wing tip the needle had paused a moment longer than it should have, leaving a tiny hole, and she left them there, the way you leave a back door on the latch.