Celtic Butterfly Tattoos

If you are a fan of Celtic tattoos or butterfly designs then you might want to consider a Celtic butterfly tattoo. The butterfly has been a very powerful symbol in many ancient cultures and it still holds a lot of significance in todays culture. Celtic knotwork has also held people's fascination for ages so the combination of Celtic knotwork techniques with a butterfly is nothing new and no surprise but it is a fairly new design to tattoos and people really like it. Here is a little background about Celtic beliefs on the butterfly, knotwork designs in general and then some help in designing a tattoo.

The Butterfly In Celtic Artwork

It is really no surprise to see the beautiful butterfly designs in Celtic art. Even the most traditional art work done by the early monks have butterflies in the design. When you think about it this is not a surprise. The Celtic monks were fascinated by the butterfly. How could they help it the butterfly is one of the most amazing creatures. It starts out life as a lowly caterpillars and then makes a cocoon and comes out as a beautiful butterfly. This is a most amazing transformation and one the many ancient cultures were fascinated by. The early Celtic monks and artists of course found a lot of meaning and symbolism behind the life of the butterfly and felt that the life of the butterfly symbolized a souls journey back to God.

About Celtic Knots

If you are not familiar with Celtic art work it is basically a series small cord that is illustrated as being knotted to itself in an endless chain of line work. These knots are called endless knots and they have no beginning and no end and typically symbolize eternity and unity.

Celtic knotwork patterns were developed first by monks living in monasteries. They believed that the practice of creating illuminated pages of text and illustrating them with beautiful knotwork helped improve their concentration and their connection to God.

Creating Your Own Celtic Butterfly

If you are thinking about getting a beautiful Celtic butterfly tattoo then you will want to spend some time coming up with a design for your idea. There are many ways you can go about this and it just depends on what you want to do. You can go the technical route and use the computer to aid you in designing a Celtic knotwork tattoo in the shape of a butterfly. There are Celtic fonts available to help you with this. As an alternative you can try doing it with graph paper, and pencil. Another option is to get a strong outline of a butterfly tattoo and then fill the inner part with you own freehand Celtic knotwork design.

If you don't want to do the work yourself and don't feel artistically inclined to do so you can foten find a design online or pay a professional tattoo artist at your local tattoo shop.