Woman in a black top showing a colour floral tattoo on her upper arm, with pink and red roses, green leaves and black script reading Stop and smell the roses.

Floral wreath with "Stop and smell the roses" script

Botanical · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A woman seen from behind, with her face out of frame, shows a floral tattoo wrapped around her upper arm. Pink and red roses, smaller blooms and green foliage form a wreath around black cursive script that reads Stop and smell the roses. The clean linework and soft colour fills sit on a pale background, and the design is centred on the outer arm.

Botanical Lettering Upper arm Rose Flower Leaves Foliage Wreath Script Lettering Phrase

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

The last rose is still in your fingers when Morrax snatches the basket away and tells you to put down the knife. The dinner guests have paid double for their wreaths and will be reclining on their couches within the hour, but he does not care. He lifts a crimson bloom from the pile and holds it under your nose until your eyes water. 'Smell it,' he says. 'Not like a dog at a midden. Like a man who means to remember.'

Keep reading

You breathe in because the alternative is an argument with a man who has been cutting thorns since before your father was born. The scent is sweet and a little rotten at the edges, like wine left too long in the sun. Beyond the shutters the harbour is shouting: carts, gulls, a sailor singing about a girl in Tarentum. Morrax hums along, badly, and threads a pink bloom into a ring of myrtle so quickly that you realise he has been doing this with his eyes closed for forty years.

When the guests arrive, loud and already tipsy, one of them asks why the garlands smell so strong. You want to tell them about the old man, but the wreath is already on his head, the colour of a bruise turning gold, and he is laughing at something you cannot hear. You return to the basket. This time you do not hurry. Every petal gets a breath first.