Traditional style tattoo of a black dagger piercing a red rose with green leaves, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dagger and rose on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A dagger with a black blade and gold-toned guard is driven through a red rose, with green leaves fanning out around the base of the flower. Bold black outlines define the shapes, and the blade is shaded with grey highlights while the rose has soft red gradients. Red rays rise behind the hilt, and the design is centred on the forearm against a white surface.

Traditional Forearm Dagger Rose Leaves

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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

Dear Nell, the Marigold limped in on the evening tide with her sails in ribbons and only three men aboard, which is two fewer than should have been. Mr Pell brought her alongside himself. He stood at the tiller with his bait knife still in his belt and didn't say a word until the lines were fast.

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The nets came up at first light, and Jack's knife was tangled in them. You'll remember it: the blade black from years of tar, the brass guard gone green at the edges, and wedged between guard and grip a rose pressed flat, the same one that grew in Mrs Ansell's window box. He swore to me he'd never carry flowers aboard a boat, and I used to tease him that a sailor who kept a rose in his pocket was a sailor who wanted to come home. I suppose he kept his word about the flowers and broke it about the coming home.

I didn't show Mr Pell what I thought. I carried the knife up to the Lantern Inn and set it on the bar, and the room went quiet, and then Dora Sayle began to cry into her apron because she'd seen that rose before, on the Sunday he sailed, when he tucked it behind his ear like a boy going to a dance.

I'm sending the knife on the carrier's cart tomorrow, since it's yours to keep now and not mine to carry around the quay. Press the rose between two pages of your sums and don't let the damp get to it. Your loving sister, Bea.