Fine line black botanical wreath of leaves and small flowers around the script words beauty for ashes, tattooed on a forearm.

Leafy wreath with script lettering on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A circular wreath of thin leaves and small buds surrounds the handwritten script words beauty for ashes. The linework is fine and even, in solid black ink with no shading, and the design sits centrally on the inner forearm against plain pale skin. The image is a close, straight-on photograph with a soft blurred background.

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

The wire had nicked my thumb twice before Mrs Pryce came in, so I was sucking the blood off when she laid the chapel's old lintel board on our counter and asked whether Vera could make something to go around it.

Keep reading

The Wesleyan chapel on Tanner Street had burned in March, a chip pan left on through a Sunday nobody had checked properly, and the congregation had carried out what they could. The board was black along one edge, but the words still showed under the soot: beauty for ashes. Vera turned it over the way she handled a bruised bloom. "Isaiah," she said. "Ivy, not lilies. Lilies are for the dead, and this lot have had enough of those."

I made the frame that evening at the bench under the bulb, bending hazel stems into a ring and wiring bay leaves to it one by one, tucking the little white bells of lily of the valley in wherever the ring thinned. It took until midnight. When I came to the middle I took a fountain pen and copied the verse onto a card, practising the joined letters until my wrist ached, and I pinned the card where the circle opened so the words sat in the bare centre like something read aloud.

On Saturday Mrs Pryce came back and stood a long time in front of it. Her husband had banked the chapel stove that night, she said, and in forty years he had never once missed a service. She touched the edge of the card and said nothing. We hung the wreath on the new door that afternoon, and the smell of cut bay drifted out into the street with the first rain, sharp and green over the old soot.

More like this

Fine line black tattoo of mountains, a crescent moon, stars and leafy sprigs inside an oval on the inner forearm.
Mountains, moon and leaves on a forearm
Fine line black tattoo of a wave inside a circle on the inner forearm of a pale-skinned arm.
Small wave in a circle on a forearm
Small fine-line black tattoo of a curling wave inside a circle on a pale forearm, with a dark sleeve at the left edge.
Wave inside a circle on a forearm
Fine line black tattoo of a poppy flower with a crescent moon and star above, set within an arch and flanked by leafy sprigs, on the upper arm.
Poppy, moon and star on upper arm
Small fine line black ink tattoo of a curling wave inside a circle on a pale forearm, beside a black sleeve.
Wave in a circle on a forearm
Black ink fine line tattoo of a wave inside a circle on the forearm, with stippled shading on pale skin.
Wave inside a circle on a forearm
Fine line black and grey tattoo of a curling wave inside a circle, placed on the inner forearm.
Small circular wave on a forearm
Black and grey fine line tattoo of a winged scarab beetle beneath a crescent moon and a row of moon phases, on the calf.
Scarab beetle with moon phases on a calf
Fine line black ink tattoo of a curling wave inside a circle on the forearm, shown against a pale arm and dark sleeve.
Wave in a circle on a forearm
Fine line black tattoo of a dove and a woman's face with an olive sprig in her hair, on the forearm.
Dove and woman's face on a forearm
Black ink circular tattoo of a rising sun with rays, a rounded rock and wave lines, on the outer forearm.
Circular sun and sea scene on a forearm
Small black and grey fine line tattoo of a curling wave inside a circle on the inner forearm, in a Japanese woodcut style.
Wave in a circle on a forearm

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.