Watercolour-style tattoo of a purple ribbon surrounded by pink and purple butterflies and small dots, on the inner wrist.

Purple ribbon and butterflies on a wrist

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A purple ribbon curls diagonally across the centre of the design, with a pink and purple shaded interior. Pink and purple butterflies and small dots scatter around it on the inner wrist. The soft, blended colour gives a loose watercolour look, and the design fills the frame with the hand visible above.

Forearm Ribbon Butterfly Dot

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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

The dough has already doubled by the time you unlock the back door, and the flour on the sill has settled into the shape of a handprint that isn't yours. Ivy Street is still black except for the laundrette opposite, where a man in a grey hoodie folds sheets with the care of someone with nowhere to be. You flick on the ovens one by one, listening for the tick of each element warming.

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The Thursday order is a sponge for the church hall, and Ruth has been specific. Pink buttercream wings, three violet sugar dots on each, and a length of lilac satin ribbon tied round the box, the same ribbon she bought from the haberdasher on Cole Road before it closed. You pipe the butterflies freehand, rolling the bag's pressure lighter on the upstroke the way your mother taught you, until the wings look like they might lift off the board if the door opened wrong.

A moth comes in through the gap you left propped with a sack of caster sugar. It is pale and dusted, and it circles the proving baskets twice before settling on the edge of the cooling rack, wings half open. You don't shoo it. You set the kettle on and let it wander between the loaves, because the light in here is the only light for miles and it has every right to come looking.

By six the window has turned the colour of weak tea, then pink at the top where the sky is clearing. You tie the lilac bow with your thumb pressed flat against the knot, and the ribbon sits on the box as if it has always been waiting there. Outside, the first van rattles past, and the moth lifts off the sill and goes out into the street without looking back.