Colour rose and black lace chest tattoo spanning both shoulders and the upper chest, with a central heart made of three roses.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and lace chest piece across the shoulders

Neo-trad · Chest · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo covers the upper chest and both shoulders, with three large red roses on the shoulders and a smaller rose on each side of the chest. A central heart of three red roses sits within a fine black ornamental pattern that resembles lace, with dotted and scalloped edging. The roses are shaded in red and pink, while the lace-like linework is in black and grey, and the image is framed against a dark background.

Neo-trad Botanical Chest Shoulder Rose Lace Heart Ornamental Pattern

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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 pattern came to me on a wet Tuesday in Beer, when the bobbins had been silent since noon because the light had gone. Mrs Ashdown sent word that the Pennington girl wanted a collar for her sister's wedding, something that would sit across the shoulders like frost and still be there when the cake was cut. I had drawn scallops for twenty years. I had never drawn a heart.

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I started with the roses because roses are easy to lie about. You can make them any colour the paper allows. I pricked them out in red thread, then, because my hands wanted it, I filled the spaces between with a net of fine dots, the kind we call a ground, and along the edges I set little dropped scallops like a row of tiny bells. Ada came in with her tea, looked over my shoulder and said the middle looked like a cathedral window. I told her it was a heart that had been asked to hold its breath.

Three weeks later the collar was finished, black silk on a backing of brown paper, and it went on the train to Exeter in a box lined with tissue. I never saw it worn. Ada did, at the church door, through the glass of the bell tower where she had been sent to ring. She said the lace moved when the bride breathed and the roses did not.

I keep the pricking card in the drawer under my bobbins. There is a small hole at the centre where I pressed too hard, and I have never mended it, because it is the one place on the whole design where the heart got through.