Traditional style tattoo of an ASK IT banner over a brown object with pale crystal points, in black outline on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

ASK IT banner with crystals on an arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A small tattoo shows a white banner reading ASK IT wrapped around a brown cylindrical object with pale pointed tips that resemble crystals. The linework is bold and black, with simple brown and cream shading inside the shapes. The tattoo sits centrally on a bare arm against a dark blue fabric background.

Traditional Upper arm Banner Crystal

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

Tuesday, 14 September. I pinned Dad's hand-lettered card back up over the till this morning, the one he painted in gold when his hands were still steady. ASK IT, it says, and underneath, smaller, because he never could leave a thing alone: the stones are not for sale to the sceptical. Mum thought that was rude. Mum said a boarding house needed a sense of humour more than good manners.

Keep reading

Nobody asks it, mostly. They come up from the sands with grit in their turn-ups, see the tray of quartz points in the bay window, buy a bag of tumbled ones for a shilling and go. The brown stick on the shelf, the one Dad carved from driftwood the winter the lifeboat came back one man short, has never sold. He said it was the only honest thing in the shop, because it had been out in the weather long enough to know which way it would fall.

Mr Halloran from number six asked it this afternoon whether his son would write. He held the stick in both hands like a dowser, and I watched his knuckles go white. I did not tell him the stick is only a stick. I said the answer was in the tray if he cared to choose. He picked a point with a crack running through it, the colour of weak tea, paid with a ten-shilling note and wouldn't take the change.

Friday. A letter came, from the son at last, two lines long and postmarked Leeds. I've put the cracked crystal on the windowsill where the light gets it, and left Dad's card exactly where it hangs.