Black and grey fine line tattoo of roses and a lace-style collar across a woman's shoulders and upper chest, with a heart-shaped ornament at the centre.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace collar tattoo with roses on the shoulders

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the shoulders and upper chest in an ornamental collar made of lace-like scrollwork, with two large roses on the shoulders and a heart-shaped motif with roses at the centre. The linework is fine and even, with small dots and filigree details, and the design is in black ink with no shading to speak of. The photograph is taken at close range, cropped below the chin, with a black top and a gold chain, and blurred people in the background.

Botanical Fine line Shoulder Chest Rose Lace Heart Collar Ornament Filigree Dot

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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

You reach Nottingham Victoria with the collar folded in tissue paper inside your coat, the last of your grandmother's pattern drawn on card. The platform clock is four minutes slow and the tea trolley has already gone past twice. Nobody here knows that the scrollwork you have carried since Derby is a copy of a lace collar she once made for a bride who never came back for it.

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Your grandmother worked the bobbins for thirty-one years, pricking pins into card and counting dots until her eyes gave out. She taught you that every rose in the pattern is a stitch you cannot afford to rush, and that the heart at the centre is the hardest, because it must sit exactly where the collar meets the skin of whoever wears it. You never wore it. You only learned to draw it, dot by dot, at the back of the shop while the wireless played dance music.

The train from Leicester is late, and a man in a grey overcoat keeps asking the board whether the Derby service has been cancelled. You open the tissue and look at the filigree, the tiny dots like frost on a window, and you think about the bride's name written in pencil on the back of the card: Edith Lowe, 1931. Your thumb finds the crease where the heart folds. The pattern is still whole.

When the train finally sighs in at platform four, you walk to the end of the platform where the lamp is brightest and unfold the card against the iron railing. You are not going to find Edith. You know that. But you lay the collar on the rail, smooth the paper flat with your palm, and let the wind take the tissue away over the tracks, so that the pattern is the only thing left to be carried.