Two ornate pen drawings of tattoo designs on paper, a mandala-style piece above and a lace-like collar design below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ornate mandala and lace collar designs

Mixed · Flash

Two hand-drawn tattoo designs sit on a sheet of paper: a radial mandala with floral motifs at the top, and a wide collar-shaped lace pattern with paisley and scroll details below. The linework is fine and dense, built from repeated dots, curves and petal shapes, with red shading filling parts of the lower design. The two pieces are placed one above the other on a plain light background with a dark surface at the edges.

Mandala Lace Paisley Floral Scroll Collar Ornamental Design

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The collar came back from Mrs Ashdown's on Tuesday with the red ink run all down the left-hand scallop, and she wants it done again by Friday or she will take her orders to Leicester. I have sat up two nights with the lamp turned low and the window open so the smell of the dye vats doesn't follow me into bed. Do not tell Mother that. She thinks I have given up drawing for the chapel calendar.

Here is what I have settled on. Start from the centre, a ring of dots no bigger than a pinhead, then petals fanned out eight ways, each one holding a smaller petal inside it like a nesting doll. Father always said a pattern should be readable from the far end of the room and under a magnifying glass, and I think I have finally managed both. The paisleys hang off the bottom edge like drips of wax, and at each one I put a curl of scroll so the eye can't rest anywhere for long.

The red is the difficult part. Mrs Ashdown wants it to look as though the light is coming up from underneath, so I have shaded only the lower third, working from the edge inward with the sable brush you were given when you were nine and ruined everything else with. It bled on the first attempt. It will not bleed on the second.

I'll post the card on Monday with the pricking marked. If the sea is kind, you might see it in a shop window in Derby by the spring.

Your loving sister, Ada