Black and grey realism tattoo of two roses, rosary beads and a crucifix running down a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two roses and rosary with cross on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two shaded roses are stacked vertically, with leaves and a strand of rosary beads looping between them and a crucifix hanging at the bottom. The work uses soft grey shading and fine highlights on the petals, beads and cross, giving a three-dimensional effect. The design fills a tall, narrow area of skin against a tiled floor in the background.

Realism Forearm Rose Rosary Cross Bead Leaves

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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

Sit closer, the fire's worth the trouble tonight. You'll want to hear how the Saturday dances at the Palais in Millbrook Lane got their bell-rope of a rosary hung from the ceiling, because my grandmother swore it was real and my uncle swore it was a lie to keep the boys out of the cellar.

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The story goes that Winnie Harrigan ran the cloakroom with a biscuit tin full of ribbons, and every girl who came in had to leave something on the hook: a glove, a hairpin, once a whole pair of tan stockings. Winnie kept them all. When a boy came asking after a particular girl he'd danced with, she'd reach into the tin and hand him a rose-coloured pin, and he'd know she was the one he'd been dreaming of. Nobody ever questioned her arithmetic. The beads she wore round her wrist clicked whenever she counted out change, and the little silver cross swung against the tin lid like a metronome.

One February a soldier, Tommy Ruddock, came in off the late train with mud still on his boots and asked for his sweetheart's hairpin. Winnie looked at him a long while, then turned the tin upside down on the counter. Nothing came out but a single rosebud pinned to a torn ticket stub. She told him his girl had left it on the hook the night before he shipped out, and that a pinned rose stayed where it was put until someone else came asking. He sat on the bench by the coats until the band packed up.

When they finally pulled the cloakroom door shut, the cross was still swinging on the wall where Winnie had hung it. Nobody remembers who put it up there. That's the bit my uncle can't explain.