Black and grey realistic tattoo of a beaded band with hanging feathers on the side of a hip.

Beaded band and feathers on a hip

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a wide beaded band with cylindrical beads and metal rings, from which a large feather and smaller feathers hang on strings of beads. The linework is fine and the feathers are built up with soft shading and fine stippling to show texture. The image is a close side view in black and grey, with a patterned bikini strap visible above the design.

Realism Other Feather Bead

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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

Mind the kettle, and don't reach for the bread until I've finished, for this is the part where the snow comes into the story and stays. Shift your chairs nearer the grate. There, that's better. Now, you'll want to hear about the beadmaker of Hollin Cross, who never once in her life made a thing without counting it aloud.

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Her name was Marta Lund, and one winter her brother Eli came to her door with a loose band of bone-coloured tubes and a tangle of brass rings. He was bound over the high road to the ferry town, where a girl had promised to wait for him under the lamps. Marta took the band in her cold hands, strung it fresh with twelve glass beads and three grey feathers, a hawk's, a heron's and a jay's, and tied the knots tight. 'Forty-one beads,' she said, 'and every one of them a mile of road. Lose one and you'll lose the way.'

He lost the first bead before the bridge and the second before the pines. By dusk the snow had filled every track, so he felt for the rest of them by touch, dropping each one into the drift like a crumb for a bird. When the lamp finally showed through the white, he had only the hawk feather left on the string, and a woman at the door who smiled as if she had been expecting him for years. 'Your sister counted well,' she said. 'The beads brought you here, and the feathers will take you home.'

Eli came back the following spring with the band wrapped in oilcloth, the feathers still whole, and the girl's answer folded in his coat. Marta hung it on the nail above her hearth, and she never let anyone move it. So when you see that bare nail above our fire, you'll know it's kept for the band that brought a lost man home. Now, who's for more tea?