Traditional-style flash design of red and yellow roses and rope framing a lettered sign on a aged yellow background, with no body part shown.

Roses and rope sign flash design

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A traditional-style flash design shows red and yellow roses with green leaves at the corners, surrounding a central lettered sign bordered by rope. The sign's text is set in bold black capitals on a golden-yellow panel, with a dark brown rope and a small star row dividing the lines. The aged, parchment-like background and bold black outlines give the piece a vintage sheet look, with a yellow and orange gradient at the lower centre.

Traditional Rose Rope Sign Lettering Leaves Banner

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the gold leaf has taken against me again. It lifts off the size whenever the back room gets damp, so I have been working in the scullery with the kettle going to keep the air warm. Mr Hollis wants the board hung by Saturday, and he has changed the wording twice since Monday. First it was a sentence about cats, then a sentence about his late wife's cooking, and now he has settled on the old sign that has hung in the snug since before the war, the one with the roses round it, the one the men call the Rose Board.

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I copied the lettering from the original panel before the damp got into it. The rope I did last, looping it round the frame with a brush no thicker than a cat's whisker, and Hollis stood over me sucking his pipe and saying it looked too cheerful. I told him a rope that looks miserable is no good to anybody. He laughed at that, which is more than he has done since the funeral.

Here is the thing I have not told him. Under the old board, when I scraped back the paint on Tuesday, I found another name pencilled in the grain, Ruth, and a date, and a little drawn anchor. Nobody remembers who wrote it. I left it there, under the new gilt, where only I know it is. Some things on a board are for the ones who come back, not the customers.

I am sending the first proof sketch with this. Keep it somewhere dry. Your loving father, Walter.