Traditional tattoo of two clasped hands over a red heart with blood drops, flanked by red roses on the abdomen, with a white lace bra visible above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Handshake, heart and roses on the torso

Traditional · Other · Mixed · Photo

A close crop of a torso showing a traditional-style tattoo centred on a clasped handshake with a red heart beneath it, which has dark outlines and three drops of red beneath it. Two red roses with dark green leaves flank the handshake on each side, and a small dagger sits above the bra's central strap. The bold black outlines and flat fills in red, green, yellow and skin tones give the piece a classic American traditional look, against a white lace bra.

Traditional Other Hand Heart Rose Dagger Blood drop Leaves

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

Two brothers shared a farm above Coldharbour Lane and one pair of boots, their mother's, because neither would let the other go out in bare feet. When the snow shut the road in the hard winter of the flood, Tom walked down to the mill to ask Abel Strood for seed corn on credit. Ned stayed behind to break the ice on the trough and keep the cattle from the river.

Keep reading

Abel said he would lend the seed if the brothers gave him something that would hold. Tom offered his word. Abel laughed and said words froze in February. His daughter Hester, who kept the account book, took the twine knife from her apron and pricked the heel of her own hand, then passed it over. Tom did the same. Three drops fell onto the ledger and spread into the ruled lines like ink, and Abel grudgingly sealed the sacks.

Tom dragged the sledge home at dusk and found Ned by the stove with his palm wrapped in rag, cut on the trough chain. Neither of them said much. They clasped hands across the table the way their father had clasped hands with cattle dealers, and the stove ticked, and the bargain stood. The north field greened in April and the debt was paid to the penny by harvest.

Years later the ledger came up in a house clearance, sold in a box of loose almanacs. Hester's hand had written one line at the foot of the last page: Paid, both of them, in full. Nobody had ever thanked Ned for the trough, and nobody had asked Tom for the sacks back, and the two of them had never once mentioned the cost.