Black ink line drawing of a moth in an ornate frame with rose or peony flowers, drawn as a botanical tattoo design with no body placement shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moth and flower design with ornate frame

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink line drawing of a detailed moth with patterned wings sits at the centre, framed by an ornate scrolled border. Full, layered flower heads, likely roses or peonies, sit at the upper left and lower right, with fine filigree flourishes linking them. The drawing is in clean black linework on pale paper, with faint red guide lines running diagonally across it.

Botanical Moth Rose Peony Flower Frame Flourish Filigree Scroll

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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 peonies have come up the wrong colour again, more like cold custard than the pink your mother promised, but I cut the lot anyway and they're in jam jars along the chapel porch, dropping petals on the hymn books. Your gran would have fussed about that.

Keep reading

The drawing you asked me to keep safe is in the envelope with this. Ray Cotter did it at the kitchen table in March, the night the lamp kept pulling moths through the open window. He ruled those faint red lines himself with a steel rule from the printing works, one running corner to corner so the frame would sit square on the page. He said a frame is only honest if it knows where the middle is.

The moth was his favourite part. He spent two evenings on its wings, every scallop filled in with tiny hatched lines, and when I teased him he said a moth is just a candle's admirer that got the right kind of patience. I didn't understand until I watched him rub out a smudge with his thumb and leave a grey ghost of it behind, which he wouldn't let me tidy.

Tomorrow, when they hand over the rings, look at the empty space inside the scrolled frame where the photographs will go. Leave it empty for a minute. That's where the moth would land if we let it in. Love, Nan.