Black line drawing of an ornate cross with scrollwork and a open heart at its centre, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement.

Ornate cross with heart design

Black and grey · Flash

A black outline drawing of an ornate cross with filigree-like scrollwork, knots and curls along each arm. A heart sits at the centre of the cross, with a smaller diamond shape in the lower shaft. The image is line only, in solid black on white, with no shading or colour.

Cross Heart Scrollwork Filigree Diamond

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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

Sit closer, and mind the tin cup, it has been on that step since the Hendersons' well ran dry. The wind out here carries grit into a man's ear, so you'll need to lean in for the rest. Abel Quarrie was the smith at Lark Wells, on the Ninety Mile road, and he did not care for fancy work. He shod horses and mended hinges, and once a year he made a cross for the chapel gate, rod iron beaten into curls so fine the dust sat on them like frost.

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The summer the flood channel took Ruth Ansel's brother, she came to the forge with a sack of his belt buckles and asked for a cross for the grave. Abel said yes and worked nine nights. He cut the lower shaft into a long diamond, twisted the arms into knots and scrolls, and when he came to the centre he bent a horseshoe warm and hammered it into a heart. Then he burned the middle clean out of it so only the outline stayed. When Ruth asked why, he said a heart was only ever a shape around whatever you put inside it, and he had not yet settled what her brother would want in there.

Ruth took the cross to the grave, then had it moved to the bend in the road where her brother used to wave at the carriers. Abel and his boy set it in concrete there, facing west. The iron has gone the colour of stewed tea now, and the grit has worn the curls soft at the edges.

Here's the bit I always tell last. When the sun drops behind the ridge, it comes through that empty heart and throws a small bright heart across the road, and every lorry that brakes for the bend drives straight through it. Drivers say it's luck. Abel always said it was only light finding somewhere to go. That's your lot. Finish the tea if you want it, though it's stewed by now.