Black lace-style chest tattoo with a shaded key inside an oval frame, extending onto the left shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace collar tattoo with key centrepiece

Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A black ornamental piece spans the upper chest and collarbones, built from scalloped lace panels with drop details. At the centre, a shaded key sits inside an oval frame surrounded by lotus-like petals and leaves. The shading is soft and grey, with faint pink-purple accents in the petals, and the design fills the frame symmetrically across the chest.

Realism Chest Shoulder Lace Key Lotus Mandala Ornament Oval frame Leaves Swirl

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

Tom, the key you left on my kitchen table in March is still sitting on the windowsill beside the bobbins, and I have stopped pretending I didn't notice you forget it. Mrs Pardoe brought back the collar she ordered on Tuesday, saying the scallops looked like thumbprints. I told her thumbprints were exactly what a good lace-maker leaves behind, but she wanted her money back all the same.

Keep reading

I have been working from the old pattern book your father kept, the one with the oval frame drawn in brown ink and the petals sketched beneath it like a lotus opening at dawn. Every evening I pin the parchment to the cushion, set the bobbins in their rows, and let the lace grow outwards from the centre. The key is the hardest part. I keep wanting to make it too bright, because you always said the lamp room was the brightest place on the coast and I should not be shy about it.

On Thursday the wind dropped flat, so I walked up to the headland with the finished panel folded in tissue. The light at Carrick was turning slow and white across the water, and I could make out your shape at the gallery rail, small as a pin. I held the lace up against the sky so you would see the drops hanging from the edges, the way the rain hangs off the rigging.

I am posting the key back with this, wrapped in the first piece I have made that I am not ashamed of. Hang it on the nail by the door where Father kept his. Come down when the relief boat runs, and bring the book with you, because I want to see whether the petals still open the right way.