Black script reading Love me for who I am across the upper chest, with a small butterfly above the text and a larger shaded butterfly on the shoulder.

Script quote and butterflies on collarbone

Lettering · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of black script lettering reading "Love me for who I am" running diagonally across the upper chest towards the shoulder. A small butterfly sits above the lettering, and a larger butterfly with soft grey and brown shading sits on the shoulder. The photo is taken at a slight angle with warm skin tones and a dark top at the edge of the frame.

Lettering Chest Shoulder Script text Quote Butterfly

Find an artist for this

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 rain had been coming down on Brackley Lane market since before seven, so I was working under the awning of my van with a sheet of ply across two trestles and a jam jar of black enamel going thick in the cold. Ruth Abbott stood at the edge of the tarpaulin with a carrier bag of records dripping on her boots. She wanted a fascia board for her stall, nothing fancy, just the line her husband used to say when he came in from the late shift and she was pretending not to wait up. She said it once, quietly, the way you'd read a shopping list. Love me for who I am.

Keep reading

I showed her a few copybook hands. She shook her head at every one. Too tidy, she said, like a wedding invitation. In the end she drew it herself on the back of a receipt, letters leaning forward as if they were running for a bus, and I copied it straight across the board with a size-two rigger. The ascenders went up and over, and the final m trailed off into a little flourish she asked me to keep long, the way a kite string trails. Then she wanted butterflies, one small one sat above the words and a bigger one out on the right edge where the wood would catch the light. Her dad had kept a jar of them in the shed, she said, and she'd never had the nerve to let them go.

By the time I'd finished the second wing the rain had thinned to a fine mist and the stallholders were shouting prices across the road. Ruth paid me in coins she counted twice, then propped the board against her crates and stood back to read it. She didn't say anything. She just touched the bigger butterfly with one damp finger and left a smudge on the grey shading, which I didn't mind. The sun came out thin and white over the car park, and the wet enamel began to shine.