Colour tattoo of a black lace heart with purple roses and grey leaves on a forearm, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lace heart with purple roses on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large heart made of black lace and filigree patterns sits at the centre of the design, with purple and magenta roses at the top, left and right and in the lower right. Grey leaves and small black dots frame the heart, and the lace is drawn with bold black linework and some grey shading. The purple roses have pink highlights, and the tattoo fills most of the limb against a bright blue background.

Neo-trad Botanical Forearm Heart Lace Rose Leaves Filigree

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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

Dear Tom, the bobbins have been clicking since before light and my fingers are still stained violet from the dye vat, so forgive the blot on this page. Mrs Pargeter wants a heart worked in black net for the Lady Mayoress's parlour, fine as cobweb and no thicker than a sigh. I have made it, with filigree spiralling through the middle like the curl on a pie crust, but I could not resist the roses. Three of them climb the top and sides and one tumbles low on the right, purple as the bruise you showed me on your thumb from the stove door. I told myself that was a joke, not a warning.

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You wrote that the Cormorant's galley is so hot the lard runs off the shelves, and that the cook cannot keep a clean apron past Tuesday. I pictured it all while I worked. I put a grey leaf at each corner so the heart looks as if it has fallen into a hedge, and I dotted black pins through the lace where your route would go: Cape Horn, then the River Plate, then home. Every dot is a day I have not seen you.

Mrs Pargeter sent it back. She says the lace is too delicate to survive a parlour with a cat in it, and the Lady Mayoress prefers lilies. So the heart is mine now, and I have given it to the steward, who swears he will lodge it in the flour tin at the back of the stores where the damp cannot reach. Look under the suet. Do not bake it in. When the sea goes flat and the stove goes out, hold it up to the lamp and count the roses until you find the one that is me.