Pencil drawing of a traditional-style tattoo design showing a hand with dark nails holding a cracked oval hand mirror, with a banner reading YOU'RE STILL PRETTY.

Hand holding a cracked mirror with banner

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil sketch of a tattoo design showing a hand with dark-tipped nails gripping an ornate oval hand mirror whose glass is cracked and shattered, with loose shards flying off the frame. A ribbon banner across the bottom reads YOU'RE STILL PRETTY, and a small cross motif and wisps of smoke or swirl sit on the back of the hand. The linework is bold with hatched shading on the banner and mirror, and the design is entirely in black and grey tones on a white background.

Traditional Hand Mirror Banner Lettering Cross Nail Smoke

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 flour sacks were already stacked when I found the mirror, pushed behind the proving cabinet where Des must have hidden it years ago. The frame was pewter, beaded all the way round like a string of tiny pearls, and the glass had split from one corner in a starburst. Some of the shards still sat in their silver channels, others had given up and lay in the crumbs under the rack. I wiped it with the corner of my apron and my reflection came back in pieces, grey with the night's first flour.

Keep reading

Des had run the early shift for thirty-one years and never once said a kind word before six. The card taped to the mirror's back was in his square capitals, the sort of thing he'd leave on the tray of hot cross buns to make the girls on the counter laugh. YOU'RE STILL PRETTY, it said, underlined twice, with a little cross drawn in the corner like a full stop. I'd always assumed it was a joke at somebody's expense. Standing there, I wasn't sure whose.

The oven timer went off and I set the mirror on the bench to deal with the tray. The dough needed knocking back, the window over the sink was turning from black to a bruised blue, and somewhere out on the high street a van was grinding its gears. When I came back, the sun still hadn't risen, but the cracks had caught the light from the hobs and the whole glass glittered, a hundred small skies in a broken frame.

I didn't throw it out. I hung it on the nail by the back door, where Des used to keep his keys, and I propped the card against the flour bin where I'd see it. Then I tied my apron tighter, reached for the first tray of loaves, and said to nobody in particular, 'Still am, you old sod.' I meant the mirror, and I meant him, and I'm not sure which of us needed it more.