Black ink line drawing of an infinity symbol with the words live, laugh and love along it, and a butterfly on the right, drawn on white paper as a tattoo design.

Infinity design with words and butterfly

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows an infinity symbol made from a single thin black line, with the words live, laugh and love written along its loops in a looping script. A simple butterfly with outlined wings and a curved antenna sits at the right-hand end of the symbol. The linework is fine and even, on a plain white background, with no shading or colour.

Fine line Infinity Butterfly 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

The sign on the kiosk had said LIVE LAUGH LOVE for three summers before anyone complained, and the complaint came from a gull. Maud Pardoe had painted it in one unbroken stroke of the pen, because her father always said a line you lift off the board goes wrong in the middle, and he had been right about most things except the gulls.

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Her brother Eddie wanted proper lettering, with shadows and gold leaf, something the Council could not object to. Maud said the loops were the point. You followed the words round the figure of eight and the eye had nowhere to stop, which was what a pier was for. She had drawn the butterfly at the end only because the pen wanted somewhere to rest, and a butterfly is a thing that goes on and on without quite getting anywhere.

In October the storm took the roof and half the railings. Eddie found her on the wet boards at dawn with the ink tin upended beside her, tracing the line again with a fingertip through the spilt black. He asked what she was doing. She said she was checking it still joined up.

By the time the tide had gone out, the tin was empty and the line was there in the grain of the wood, bending round and back on itself. Eddie reached for the paint pot. Maud caught his sleeve. Leave it, she said. The sea will come back for it, and it will come back round, the way it always does.