Black ink drawing of a crescent moon filled with mandala patterns, with the words To the moon and back and small stars along the inner edge.

Crescent moon mandala with lettering

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink line drawing of a crescent moon on plain paper. The outer crescent is filled with radial mandala motifs in dense, repeated linework, and a smooth inner curve carries the phrase To the moon... and back in hand-drawn capitals. Small five-pointed stars sit along the inner edge, and the image is entirely black ink with no colour.

Geometric Lettering Crescent moon Mandala Star Lettering

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 Marguerite,

Keep reading

The frost finally took the dahlias on Tuesday, so I have been out after dark with the torch, checking the beds and catching slugs by the light of the shed. I keep looking up instead of down. The moon has been fat and yellow over the apple tree all week, and every time I see it I think of the summer you were sixteen and used Dad's black gloss to paint a crescent on the back wall.

You did it in one evening while Mum was at bingo. The curve came out crooked, so you filled its fat side with rosettes, rings inside rings, copied from a library book about temple floors. Along the inner edge you put five-pointed stars, and you wrote TO THE MOON across the hollow part, then ran out of wall. You wrote AND BACK on the gate in chalk, and Dad painted over the gate the next weekend without asking, which is why I still see it when I close my eyes.

Here is the strange part. I dug the bed under that wall in March, and the anemones have come up in rings, round and pale, exactly where your rosettes were. I set seedlings in a curve of little dots where your stars sat, and it turns out they like that corner best, so I have given up arguing with them.

I have left the back gate unlatched. The chalk is still there underneath, if you look. Come home the long way and let me show you the wall.

Love, Jean