Two views of a wrist tattoo of a heart made from fingerprint whorls, half red and half black, with the script Like Mother, Like Daughter above and below it.

Fingerprint heart with script on wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two photographs show the same tattoo on the inner wrist from slightly different angles. A heart is formed from fingerprint ridges, with the left half in red and the right half in black and grey, and fine shading gives the whorls depth. Script lettering reading Like Mother, Like Daughter sits above and below the heart on a dark background.

Lettering Forearm Heart Fingerprint Script Quote

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

The snow had sealed the pass for three days when Ilse Marrow pressed her thumb into the red ink pot and rolled it across the inn ledger. Her mother watched from the settle by the hearth, knitting needles still in her lap. "Mind the ridges," Mother said. "A debt is only paid when the whorls come out true."

Keep reading

Late on the third night a carter came stamping through the door with frost in his beard and a purse that clinked short. He offered his thumb in place of coin, as his grandfather had done at that same table. Ilse took down the old book, found the black print of his family, and laid his thumb against it. The ridges matched like the teeth of a key. Her mother said nothing, only pushed the bread towards him, and the carter wept without knowing why.

Before dawn the wind dropped. The carter had gone, leaving his coins on the bar and the pass open under a white hush. Ilse came down to find her mother had already tipped soot into the black pot and was waiting with her own thumb bare. "Your turn," she said.

Ilse pressed hers into the black beside the red. When the two prints sat side by side on the page, they made a heart that neither of them had planned.