Realism style colour tattoo of red roses with black lace and beaded chains, and two feathers, on a woman's upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red roses and feathers on upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A large red rose cluster, with a smaller rose and dark leaves behind, sits on the shoulder and upper arm. Beneath it, black lace, strings of beads and fine chains hang down the arm, ending in two shaded black and grey feathers. The roses are shaded in red and crimson against a black background, and the composition runs from the shoulder down the outer arm.

Realism Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Rose Leaf Lace Bead Chain Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The jet beads kept slipping off the cord, so Ada Penhallow sat with the lamp pulled close and threaded them one by one, counting under her breath the way her mother had taught her to count stitches in church. Mrs Carrow wanted roses at the shoulder, red as the ones from the glasshouse on Quay Lane, and below them a drop of lace that would hang like a fall of rain.

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Ada had never sewn feathers before. She had a box of them from the rookery behind the chapel, sorted by the mill girls who sold them for hat trimmings, and she chose two long grey primaries with black barring and clipped their quills so they would lie flat against the silk. The chain was the hardest part. Fine links ran from the lace to the feathers, and each one had to be looped so it could swing without tangling in the others.

When Mrs Carrow came for the bodice on the Friday she held it up to the window and turned slowly, and the beads ticked against each other like a clock that had forgotten the hour. "You've made it fall," she said. It was not quite a question. Ada said the lace would last if it were not caught on anything sharp, and Mrs Carrow nodded and left without paying the rest.

The following week a parcel came to the shop with the bodice folded inside, the feathers wrapped separately in brown paper. A note in a narrow hand said only: keep the roses, I have no use for them now. Ada unpicked the smallest rose, the one tucked behind the others, and pinned it to her own sleeve, where the lamplight caught the red and the beads began to move as she reached for the thread.