Black ink crown above the word Love in script lettering, placed on a woman's upper chest near the collarbone.

Crown and Love script on upper chest

Lettering · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo of an ornate crown sits above the word Love written in flowing script. The linework is solid and fairly bold, with shading in the crown's band and details. The image is monochrome, with the tattoo set against soft, light skin and loose dark hair framing the left side of the frame.

Lettering Chest Crown Love Script

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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

You have been piping since five, and Mrs Haworth has already asked twice whether the crown can be lifted off and kept somewhere safe until the speeches. The cake is three tiers of lemon sponge under white fondant, cooling in the back kitchen of the church hall in Robin Hood's Bay, with the sea audible through the open window whenever the fridge door is shut. Your hands smell of icing sugar and the cheap vanilla Pat keeps in a jam jar.

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The crown is the difficult part. Pat made it from sugar paste the night before, pressed into a silicone mould her late husband bought at a car boot sale in 1987, and it is the finest thing on the table. It has a band of tiny beads and four arches that want to fold inwards in the heat. You prop it on a bed of rice in a biscuit tin and sit with it, breathing slowly the way Pat taught you, until the arches set.

Then the word. Mrs Haworth wanted LOVE across the middle tier, not in capitals but in the looping hand her daughter uses on the invitations, and you have practised it on greaseproof paper for an hour. The first L comes out crooked. The second attempt holds. You write the O, then the V, and by the time the E swings out to meet the final stroke, the bride's father is standing in the doorway asking if you need anything. You say no, and you mean it.

When the crown finally goes on top, slightly off centre because the cake has settled, nobody notices except you. Pat wipes her hands on her apron and says a crown never sits straight on a good cake, it sits where it likes. You leave the tin on the side with the spare beads inside, and an hour later the bride's nephew finds it and pockets one without asking.