Colour tattoo of a pink awareness ribbon with blue and purple butterflies on the outer thigh, in a neo-traditional style with bold outlines.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pink ribbon and butterflies on thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a pink awareness ribbon in the centre, with a blue butterfly on its left and smaller purple butterflies around it. Bold dark outlines define the ribbon and wings, with soft pink, lilac and blue shading that gives the ribbon some depth. The design sits on a smooth area of skin, with black clothing and a skull print visible at the edge of the frame.

Neo-trad Thigh Ribbon Awareness ribbon Butterfly

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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, the lamp only warms one of us. You want the story of the ribbon on the wire at Halvard Gate, the one that was pink before the weather got into it? Good. Then hold your tongue about the lorry drivers, they have their own stories and none of them end well.

Keep reading

There was a woman called Mira Oszkar who kept the level crossing house when the road still carried carts. Her younger brother had gone over that line one March with a pack on his back and a promise to write, and the letters stopped the way letters do. Every spring after, she tied a length of pink silk to the barrier wire, and every spring the butterflies came up out of the ditch to find it. The blue one always arrived first, bold as a customs officer. The smaller purple ones followed and would settle on nothing but her wrist, so she learned to hold still and let them.

One year the new inspector, a thin man named Anton Feld, unwound the silk to see if it hid anything. He found nothing but a knot of wet thread and a row of names inked along the hem, the ones she had not been able to say aloud. He asked what it was for. She told him it was so anyone crossing could look up and know someone on this side was still counting. He said nothing for a long while, then cut a strip from the hem, tied it round his cap, and went back to his post.

The next morning the wire was bare and the butterflies had gone up in a single cloud, eastward, the blue one leading. Mira walked the ditch for the silk and never found it. Feld swore the strip on his cap had grown heavier every day after, though he never once said why, and he always touched it before he waved a car through.