Back view of a woman with a small heart tattoo on her neck, a red rose and grey vine tattoo on her left shoulder and upper arm, and a crown tattoo on her right shoulder.

Rose, vine and crown tattoos on shoulders

Botanical · Neck · Mixed · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind with her dark hair tied up, showing several tattoos. A small heart outline sits at the nape of the neck, a red rose with green leaves and fine grey vine linework covers the left shoulder and upper arm, and a crown outline with shading sits on the right shoulder. The background is an outdoor car park, and the lines are clear with the colour mainly in the rose.

Botanical Fine line Neck Shoulder Upper arm Heart Rose Vine Leaves Crown

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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 hedge had grown across the lane for three summers before anyone thought to cut it, and by then the briars had climbed the gatepost of the old Harrow place and wound through the ironwork like a sentence nobody wanted to finish. You are the one who fetches the shears, because the village has decided you are the sort who does not mind thorns, and because the rest of them have already been stung.

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Halfway down, you find the crown. It hangs from a single runner at the height of a child's shoulder, a band of tarnished silver with three points, as though someone hung it there on purpose and walked away. Beside it a red rose has opened in October, its petals dark at the edges, and its leaves are green as pond water and curled like fists. Nobody in Greaves Mill has worn a crown since the last squire died, and nobody will say who put this one in the hedge.

The old women at the well say the vine keeps what it catches. You cut the stem anyway. The vine lets go with a sound like a held breath, the crown drops into your palm, lighter than it has any right to be, and the rose's stalk splits under the blade. A bead of sap, red as the bloom, runs down to your wrist and stays there, warm, as if the hedge has decided to keep a small part of you.

That evening you hang the crown on the nail above the kitchen door, where the tea towels usually go. By morning the vine has crept in through the open window and wound a new tendril around the nail, curling it into a heart on the sill. You leave it there. The rose has opened again, though you cut it and it should be dead, and its petals are wet, as though something has been crying over it all night.