Black line drawing of a traditional-style tattoo design with roses, a teacup with rising steam, a cupcake and a scroll banner, shown on translucent paper.

Roses, teacup and cupcake design

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

The design shows a cluster of roses at the top, with a banner or ribbon and a figure-like shape in the centre. A cupcake with a piped frosting swirl and a teacup with curling steam sit below, with a small rose at the base. The artwork is drawn in bold black outlines with simple shading on a translucent sheet, with no colour and a plain background.

Traditional Rose Teacup Cupcake Steam Banner Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The roses had come up again along the south wall the week after Ada Pemberton was buried, which Dot said was spite and I said was manners. We were sat on upturned crates behind the stall at Harrowgate fête, the urn hissing beside us like it had opinions, and Dot had her hat pushed back so she could squint across the lawn at the judging tent.

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I had made forty cupcakes for the Women's Institute, each piped into a tight curl of buttercream with a sugar rose set on top like a full stop. My wrist still ached from it. Dot counted them twice and said nobody would believe a woman who had buried her husband in March could manage forty, and I told her the judges could choke on their Victoria sponge.

The urn gave one last shudder and sent up a thin grey ribbon of steam that wound round the bunting, then straightened itself out over the lawn as if it had somewhere to be. Dot went quiet. She passed me a chipped teacup from the box, the one with the little hearts round its rim, and poured without asking.

We drank it black and watched the steam go up past the oak, and when the winner's rosette was pinned to my apron at four o'clock, I didn't look at the card. I just tucked it under the saucer, where the rose petal had blown, and left the cup to cool in the sun.