Colourful tattoo of hair scissors with rainbow-edged outlines and a pink and white striped blade, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Colourful hair scissors on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A pair of hairdressing shears is tattooed along the forearm, with the blades running down towards the wrist. The bold outlines shift through purple, pink, blue and yellow, and the striped blade and round pivot jewel add detail. The vivid colour sits against plain pale skin on a dark background.

Forearm Scissors

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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

You have cut hair on the Marigold Star for eleven weeks, and the shears have never once been allowed to rust. Every Tuesday the crew queue outside the linen store with their collars already turned up, and you take them in the order they signed on, not the order they would like. Rafe from the boilers wants his sideburns squared. The second mate wants nothing but ten quiet minutes while the blades click beside his ear.

Keep reading

The shears came from a salon on Anlaby Road, handed across the counter by a woman called Mrs Oduya who had cut her own husband's hair for thirty years. She turned the round pivot jewel with her thumb before she gave them over. 'Heavier on the left,' she said, 'so they fall back to true when you let go.' You have never found that to be quite right, but you have never found anything better, and in a swell like this one the weight is a comfort.

Off the Azores the sea got up in the night and the cabin lamp swung on its chain. Halfway through Ferris's fringe the ship rolled and the blades jumped apart in your hand, and for one long second you were sure you had lost the edge. You didn't. You stood in the rocking room with the comb between your teeth and waited, and the swell fell away, and the pink and white stripes on the blade caught the lamp again.

At Southampton the pilot boat came alongside at dawn. You wiped the shears on the chamois, closed them slowly, and laid them in their case with the cloth still damp. The coast came up grey and ordinary. Ashore, somebody was already waiting for a cut.