Ornate black script letter decorated with botanical sprigs and a red ladybird, shown as a tattoo design on a beige background.

Ornate script letter with ladybird

Lettering · Mixed · Flash

A decorative black script letter with a looping, flowing form is decorated with small botanical sprigs and leaves along its strokes. A red ladybird with black spots sits at the lower right of the letter, giving the only strong colour in the design. The design is set against a plain, textured beige background, and the linework is bold and clean with no shading.

Lettering Botanical Ladybird Script letter Sprig Leaves Botanical Flower

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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

Mrs Hilda Penhale had sorted the post at the Quay Street office for thirty-one years, and she knew the hand on the envelope before she read the postmark. It was the looping, over-decorated capital that Tom Varley had learned from a copybook at the Sisters' school and never once abandoned, even when he was writing to say the fishing had gone bad. This one was addressed to the lighthouse keeper's cottage at Gull Point, where nobody had lived since the winter.

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She carried it out to the harbour wall anyway. The tide was low and the boats sat tilted on the mud like tired dogs. Inside, folded twice, was a single sheet with the same big letter drawn at the top, its curls bristling with tiny sprigs of thyme and bramble leaves. Tucked into the crease was a ladybird pressed flat between waxed paper, its red gone the colour of rust.

Hilda knew Tom had been a year behind her nephew at school, but she had never heard he was sweet on anyone. The note beneath the drawing was short. "The beetle came in on the rope from Mevagissey and stayed the whole crossing. I took it for luck. If you find this, the ladybird is yours to keep. The big letter is for Lottie, who said I'd never finish a letter without a drawing in it."

Lottie Pascoe had been dead eleven years. Hilda folded the sheet back into its envelope, walked up the hill to Gull Point, and pushed it through the cottage door. She heard it drop on the bare boards. Then she turned for home with the wind at her back, the ladybird still warm in her coat pocket where she had put it without deciding to.