Line drawing of a tattoo design showing two red butterflies with black swirling vines and small flowers on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two butterflies with swirls and flowers design

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

The design shows two butterflies, one on the left and one at the upper right, filled in deep red with black linework detail on their wings. Black swirling stems, curls and small five-petal flowers run diagonally between them and along the bottom of the composition. The flat colour and bold black curves are set against a plain white background.

Botanical Butterfly Flower Swirl Vine Scroll

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mum, the back door of the bakery was propped with a sack of flour again this morning, so when I came in at half four the air was warm and sweet and smelled of proving dough. I found two butterflies on the sill above the proving drawer, red as the glaze on the cherry buns, opening and shutting their wings as if they were reading a page. Mr Okafor says they come every March to drink from the sugar syrup we leave out for the bramble tarts. I told him that was daft. He said I could tell that to the butterflies.

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I've been piping the little five-petal flowers onto the morning shortbread, the way you taught me, curling the stems off the edge of the board so they look like they're climbing. The first batch came out lopsided. Mr Okafor picked one up, turned it over, and said a flower that leans is a flower that has somewhere to go. I left the rest to cool on the rack and watched the butterflies walk along the icing curls I'd drawn on the parchment, pausing at every loop as though they were checking the路 handwriting.

By six the sky over the car park had gone the colour of weak tea and the first van was idling outside. One of the butterflies lifted off the sill and went straight out the open door into the grey, and the other followed it, low over the bins, towards the allotments where you used to take me to pick sweet peas. I stood with a tray of shortbread in my hands and thought I should have gone after them.

Anyway, I've put the best flower batch aside for you on the top shelf, in the tin with the blue lid. Come on Sunday and I'll show you how the curls go. Love, Dilys