Black line-art flash sheet of twelve small designs, including chevrons, a heart, a bow, a crown, swallows and a lightning bolt, on a white background.

Small line-art flash sheet of twelve designs

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A translucent sheet shows twelve small tattoo designs arranged in a grid of four rows and three columns. The designs include chevrons, a heart, a bow, a ringed planet, a crown, a cluster of stars, a circular geometric motif, two swallows, a diamond, an arrow, a small triangle pattern and a lightning bolt. All designs are rendered in black ink, with thin outlines in some and solid filled shapes in others.

Fine line Geometric Chevron Heart Bow Planet Crown Star Swallow Diamond Arrow Triangle Lightning bolt

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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 ballroom empties by inches, the way it always does, and you are still behind the cloakroom hatch when Eddie Vance comes back for the coat he swears he left on the third peg. There is no coat on the third peg. There is only a clear sheet of transfers, folded once and tucked under the lining, where a man might keep a letter he hasn't the nerve to post.

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You unfold it under the lamp. Twelve small marks in black: two chevrons stacked like a sergeant's stripes, a heart with a curl of ribbon at its foot, a bow tied loosely as if someone had been in a hurry, a ringed planet with dots scattered round it like spilt salt, a crown with three diamond windows, a spill of stars, a wheel of triangles inside a circle, two swallows, a diamond, an arrow, a neat little pyramid of triangles, and a lightning bolt. On the back, in Eddie's capitals, is written: FOR WHEN YOU'RE READY TO LEAVE CORRAN BAY.

He leans on the counter and tells you the swallows are for coming home and the arrow is for the way out. You ask which is which. He shrugs and grins, and it occurs to you he has been practising that joke all week, probably on the trawlermen, probably getting it wrong.

The band strikes up one last waltz for the sweepers. You take the swallows, press them onto the back of a cloakroom ticket with a damp thumb, and count to thirty the way the ticket says to. When you lift it, both birds are still there, turned towards the door, the way Eddie was turned when he walked out without his coat.