Red pencil flash drawing of a Ball Mason jar with flowers on the lid and a banner reading MOONSHINE, in a traditional style.

Mason jar with flowers and moonshine banner

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A red line drawing of a Ball Mason jar with a cluster of flowers on the lid, the word Ball across the jar and MASON below it. A ribbon banner at the base reads MOONSHINE. The linework is bold and sketchy with light shading on the glass, set on a cream paper background.

Traditional Flower Banner Ribbon Lettering

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

Ada Penhallow kept the jar on the windowsill of the signal box at Quarry Halt, where the 6:10 slowed for the points and nobody looked twice at anything. Her grandfather had filled it in the spring of the bad harvest, pouring the clear spirit off the still behind the sheepfold, and he had tied a ribbon round the neck and told her it was for the day the railway finally closed the line. The lid had a bunch of wild roses pressed into the wax by her grandmother, and the glass caught the lamp so that the letters seemed to swim.

Keep reading

The line did not close. It was men from the county who came instead, in a grey motor with a clipboard, asking after the still and the boy who had gone missing from the platform in the autumn. Ada gave them tea and let them study the timetables. She did not give them the jar.

When the last train of the year pulled in, Ada carried the jar down the steps and set it on the bench beside the milk churns. The driver leaned out, saw the ribbon, and laughed the way men laugh at a joke they have heard before. He took the jar, sipped from the rim, and handed it back. 'For the road,' he said, and the whistle went, and the carriage lights slid away over the points towards the coast.

Ada stood under the lamp until the sound was gone. Then she untied the ribbon, folded it into her coat pocket, and went back up to the box to write the time in the book.