Colour tattoo design of purple wings framing a red rose and gold key, with ornate gold filigree and two scrolls bearing script, shown as a drawing with no body placement.

Winged rose and key scroll design

Neo-trad · Colour · Flash

A coloured drawing of a tattoo design showing a pair of purple feathered wings spread either side of a red rose and a gold key. Two grey-brown scrolls with script lettering sit across the composition, with gold filigree swirls filling the spaces around them. The linework is clean and the shading is soft, set within a thin dark border.

Neo-trad Wing Rose Key Scroll Script Filigree

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

Mags had the key in her glove all through the second waltz, its teeth pressing small marks into her palm each time Vic turned her beneath the chandeliers. It was the key to Mr Oakes's office, the one with the tin cash box, and she had lifted it from its hook at nine while he counted the band's wages in the back passage.

Keep reading

Vic didn't look at her hand. He watched the bandstand, where the drummer was easing the tempo down for "Stardust", and his jaw worked the way it did when he was thinking about money he didn't have. Across the floor Lily from the cloakroom wore a purple sash for the Lilac Ball, and the colour sat on the room like a bruise going soft at the edges. Mags had planned everything for a week: the fare to Hull, the borrowed coat, the midnight train. None of it had room for a man who held her as though she might float off.

When the music stopped he walked her to the edge of the floor and went to fetch drinks. On the table beside the potted palm sat a single red rose in a jam jar, left over from the raffle. She slid its stem through the buttonhole of his jacket where it hung over a chair, then slipped down the back passage with the key still warm.

Oakes's door stood open. The tin box sat on the desk, lid up, and inside it there was no money at all, only a folded slip in Vic's square capitals: THIRTY-ONE POUNDS, SAVED SINCE MARCH. WAIT FOR ME. She turned the key over once, hung it back on its hook, and went to find him before the band packed up.