Black tribal-style butterfly with a purple awareness ribbon in its centre and the word Hope in script beneath it, tattooed on an upper arm.

Butterfly, ribbon and Hope script on upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a butterfly whose wings are filled with black swirling tribal-style scrollwork, with a purple awareness ribbon sitting across the body of the butterfly. The word Hope is written in black script below, and the cursive lettering is bold and clearly defined. The tattoo is mostly black ink with a muted purple ribbon, and the image is a close crop of the arm against a plain light background.

Lettering Upper arm Butterfly Ribbon Awareness ribbon Hope Script Swirl

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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

Sit yourselves down, the lot of you, and mind the draught from the back door, because Mrs Pell never fixed it and never will. You want the story of the Hollis girl and the moth that wouldn't leave her alone? Then hush.

Keep reading

Every summer that boarding house on the front at Scarrow took in the same lodgers, and every summer the Hollis girl sat on the bottom step with a tin of purple ribbon and a needle, stitching tiny scrolls into the black lace of her grandmother's shawl. She had been told the scrolls were for the wind. They were not. They were for the men who went out past the breakwater in the Lark and did not come home by teatime, and for the wives who waited at the window with their hands folded.

One evening a butterfly came in off the sea, black-winged and curled at the edges like burnt paper. It settled on the banister by the old barometer and would not be shooed. Mrs Pell swore it was bad luck. The Hollis girl said it was only tired, so she tore a strip of ribbon from her tin, tied it loosely around the little body the way you'd bind a splint on a bird's leg, and set it back on the rail.

The Lark came in at dawn with one boat short, and the whole village stood on the shingle with their coats open. But the butterfly rose from the banister, flew straight down the steps and over the wet stones, and went out across the grey water. Nobody remembers seeing it land. What they remember is the word the Hollis girl chalked that morning on the slate by the door, in careful copperplate, and left there for every boat that came after: Hope.