Black and grey lace-style tattoo covering the upper arm and shoulder, with flowers, leaves, pearl strands and a honeycomb mesh background.

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Lace and flower tattoo on upper arm and shoulder

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder with an ornate lace design. Layered flowers and leaves sit at the lower edge, with pearl strands and dangling chain-like drapes beneath them, over a honeycomb mesh that runs across the upper part. The work is entirely in black ink and greys, with dense linework and solid areas of shading that give the lace a raised, fabric-like look.

Blackwork Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Lace Flower Leaves Pearl Honeycomb Chain

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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

Mother has stopped asking when the Ashby order will be finished, which I take to mean she has stopped expecting an answer. The pillow sits on my knees until the candle gutters, forty bobbins clicking like a clock that cannot agree with itself, and tonight the ground keeps pulling wrong. Every hexagon of the net must close exactly, or the whole sprig sags like a wet hem. I have unpicked the same six inches four times.

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Mrs Ashby wants seed pearls worked into the flounce, a string of them down the front where the bodice meets the sleeve, and I told her the bobbin cannot hold a pearl. She said then find a thread that can. So after dark I sew them on by hand with a needle no thicker than a hair, and each one I set makes the lace lie a little heavier, the way Grandmother's veil lay on her shoulders the day she was married.

Then there are the drapes, the little chains of beads that hang from the lowest scallop and swing when the wind comes up off the Otter. Last night I worked one leaf differently, a small thing with a double vein that nobody asked for, and I set it at the very bottom where it will be folded under when the lady wears the gown. I wrote my initial in the pattern book beside it, so that someone, one day, might know it was there.

Tomorrow I will carry the pillow down to the cart myself. Mother says I am proud. Perhaps I am. But a thing hidden in the hem is still a thing made, and that is a comfort I can take up the hill with the box.