Black and grey botanical tattoo of a radiating flower with dotted berry clusters wrapped around the upper arm near the elbow.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Radiating floral mandala on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The design shows a large radiating flower at the centre, with layered petals and leaves fanning outwards. Clusters of small dots and open circles trail from the petals in a symmetrical, mandala-like arrangement. The work uses fine outlines with stippled and smoothly shaded petals in black and grey, and the design wraps around the outside of the upper arm.

Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Flower Petal Leaves Berry Dot Mandala Floral pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the chrysanthemums came up from Margate on Tuesday in three tin baths, and Mr Gall has decided they are to go in the middle of the floor under the glass dome, where the band can see them and the tea urn cannot. I have spent two days pinning petals to the wire frame. You would laugh. I have become a sort of engineer of flowers.

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The berries were the trouble. Mr Gall wanted rowan, then holly, then nothing at all, and in the end it was Mrs Ibbotson from the cloakroom who solved it with a box of sugared almonds and a hatpin. Every dot on the wreath is a seed cut from the hall's old chandelier, the glass drops we polished for the Coronation. Each one sits on its own small ring of wire so the light catches them one by one when the dancers turn.

Last Saturday the whole floor went round in a slow wheel, couples fanning out from the middle like petals opening, and I stood by the coats and thought the pattern had got away from us and was dancing on its own. Mr Gall came over at the interval and asked if I was pleased. I said I was. He said the wreath was the best thing he had ever paid for, and then he lit a cigarette, and I saw that his hand was shaking.

I am enclosing a pressed petal from the edge of the arrangement. Keep it in your hymn book. When you come up in September we will dance under the thing itself, and you can tell me whether the dots are berries or stars. Mrs Ibbotson says they are both, depending on how much the band has had. Your loving sister, Win.