Scars can be life-long reminders of abuse, so tattoo artist Flavia Carvalho decided to do something about it. Her project “A Pele da Flor” (The Skin of the Flower) is about giving hurt women tattoos free of charge. For two years, Carvalho has helped women cover scars left from knives and bullets, and from mastectomies as well. She‘s transforming these unpleasant mementos into a tool of emporwerement and beauty.

Flavia Carvalho runs a studio in Curitiba, Brasil. “I started the project quite recently, and I had no idea it would receive this much media attention,” Carvalho told Huffington Post. “It began very spontaneously. As I said, my services are a hundred percent voluntary, and the only “cost” women need to invest is to choose a design for their tattoos!”

More info: Facebook (h/t: huffingtonpost)

“It all started about two years ago, when I worked with a client who wanted to cover a large scar on her abdomen”

“She told me that she was at a nightclub, and when she turned down a man who approached her, he stabbed her with an switchblade”

“When she saw the finished tattoo, she was extremely moved, and that deeply touched me”

“The one that shocked me the most was the story of a 17 year-old girl who dated an older man and, for months, suffered from the physically abusive relationship”

“When he wanted to break up with her, he scheduled a meeting, and after they began to fight, he stabbed her several times in her abdomen, and violently raped her”

She also does free tattoos for women who had had to undergo mastectomy

This tattoo covers up a scar left by a bullet