Traditional style hourglass tattoo with LIVE FOR TODAY banners, flowers, a skull and a rose across the side of the ribs, in black, grey and pale pink.

Hourglass with banners and skull on ribs

Traditional · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

An hourglass sits within a column frame, with a banner reading LIVE above and FOR beside it, and a second banner reading TODAY below. Pink flowers, leaves, a skull and a rose surround the lower half of the hourglass. Bold black outlines and grey shading give the design depth, with pale pink used for the flowers and the hourglass glass.

Traditional Ribs Hourglass Banner Lettering Flower Leaves Skull Rose Frame

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

Mervyn Coyle had turned the sand glass every half hour for thirty-one years, and he had never once let it run dry before the bell on the stairwell. It stood on the sill of the watch room, two bulbs joined at the waist, the grains inside the colour of weak tea. His niece Ada had carried the lamp oil up the spiral that morning and found him holding the glass to the window, squinting through it like a jeweller.

Keep reading

"Stuck," he said. "Half the top's gone and the rest won't shift. Look at the neck."

She looked. A thin seam of grit hung in the throat and refused to fall. The relief boat was due on Thursday's tide, the rock was slick, and the sea had been muttering all week in the low voice it kept for weather. Mervyn rapped the brass frame with a knuckle, gently, the way you knock on a door you are not sure you want opened.

"Give it here," Ada said. Before he could argue she had the glass in both hands and was turning it over, once, twice, the sand pouring back through the throat in a sudden bright rush. Below them the gulls lifted off the ledge all at once, as if someone had called their names.

"There. Counting again."

He watched the top bulb empty. Half an hour was longer than he remembered it being. That afternoon he left the glass to Ada, pulled on his oilskin and went down to the landing to watch the boat come round the point. He did not look at the clock once. When the hull bumped the fenders he was already laughing, and the sand went on falling in the watch room with nobody there to count it.