Pen and wash drawing of an anatomical heart with red drips on a cupcake, with a banner reading Sweet Heart beneath, designed as a tattoo flash.

Anatomical heart on a cupcake with banner

Mixed · Flash

A pen drawing of an anatomical heart sitting on top of a cupcake, with swirled frosting and a ribbon banner below that reads Sweet Heart. The heart and frosting are built from dense black hatching and cross-hatching, with a soft pink and red wash. Red drips run down the frosting and the cupcake case onto the banner, set against a plain white background.

Heart Anatomical heart Cupcake Frosting Banner Lettering Blood Drip

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

Every morning before the 5.40 came through Harrowby Junction, Mrs Tilly Ansell iced cakes at the back of the buffet, and every morning she piped one extra for the signalman who never came in. His name was Owen Pask, and he had worked the lever frame for thirty years without once asking anyone for anything. The porters said he had given his heart to the railway. Tilly thought that was a thing people said to make a lonely man sound brave.

Keep reading

One wet March the flour was going off, and somebody had to use it. She baked a cake with a sugared heart on top and set it under a cloth on the counter. Owen came in soaked to the knees, saw the cloth, and lifted it without a word. He ate the cake standing up, the way he ate everything, and when he left he put a penny beside the plate and a folded red ribbon beside the penny.

Winter came and the buffet stood cold at dawn. Then the lamp in the signal box went dark on a night the snow was up to the sleepers. Tilly walked the line with a lantern, following the flags, and found him at the crossing. He had kept the points set for the late goods, cold but unhurt, with his hands still on the iron.

They buried him in the spring, and the buffet carried on baking. Tilly piped a red line down every cake afterwards, from the top of the frosting into the paper case, because it was the only way she knew to keep him on the counter. Travellers asked what it meant. She told them it was a sweet heart, and that some hearts were worth keeping on the line.