Close view of gold and blue metallic temporary tattoos with ornamental patterns on a forearm, wrist, hand and lower leg.

Gold metallic temporary tattoos on arms and hands

Forearm · Colour · Photo

Several arms, hands and a lower leg are covered in metallic gold and blue ornamental designs, including filigree scrolls, a round mandala and a leafy vine. The linework is fine and symmetrical, and the designs appear to be temporary, applied to the skin rather than inked. The warm skin tones, gold tones and soft cream fabric and textured blanket form a close, layered composition.

Forearm Hand Calf Mandala Filigree Floral ornament Scroll Vine Bracelet Wrist Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third bride came to the gilder's door before the bells had finished ringing for the dead, and she held out her wrists as though the matter were already settled. Teodora Venn had gilded nothing all week but mourning cards, so she sat the girl on the bench and unrolled the transfer sheets, thin as a moth's wing, each one cut with a scroll that curled back on itself like a fern.

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For the back of the hand she chose a round star of petals with blue set in the gaps, and for the inside of the wrist a vine that climbed towards the elbow and was never meant to meet its twin. Teodora pressed each sheet down with a damp cloth and counted under her breath, as her mother had taught her, because the gold only held if the skin was patient. The old people in Ossery said a pattern laid on that way would outlast a quarrel, and that a bride who wore the vine would never be pulled under by the river.

The girl asked whether it would wash off. Teodora said it would last a week, perhaps two, if she kept her hands out of the lake and let the ring she was promised sit on top of the gold rather than rub at it. The girl laughed and said her betrothed would not be marrying her for her hands.

When the bride walked down to the water that evening, the gilt on her wrists caught the last of the sun and threw it back in small bright coins. Teodora watched from the step until the scrolls blurred into the reeds. Days later, when the shoreline was littered with the empty transfer sheets, the blue had gone from the petals, but the gold clung to the stones where the girl had dipped her hands, and nobody in Ossery could say how it had got there.