Two people show matching black fine line script tattoos reading Family, a horizontal line, then Everything, on the upper arms.

Matching Family Everything script on upper arms

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Two upper arms are shown side by side, each with the same black script lettering reading Family above a thin horizontal rule and Everything below it. The linework is fine and even, with solid black ink and no shading. The photograph is black and white and cropped close to the arms, with the faces out of frame.

Lettering Fine line Upper arm Family Script Text Line

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

Mind the step, it's been loose since the strike, and pass that cup along before the tea goes cold. You'll want the tale of the Brannigan lads, though nobody in Hollin Dene said it to their faces, for they'd have clipped your ear for it.

Keep reading

Eli and Walter went down Hollin Pit the same week in the winter of 1926, when the cage stuck at four hundred feet and the whole row stood in the rain waiting to hear whether it would move. Walter was the loud one and Eli the careful one. Walter wanted a mark on them both, something that would show at the wash-house if the worst came. So they sat by the range with a darning needle held in the flame, a tin of boot blacking, and a card Eli had copied out in his best copperplate from the Sunday school wall. The first word went on Walter's arm and the second on Eli's, and they argued the whole while about which one should go on top.

Walter said Family belonged above, because the family was what you climbed back up to. Eli said the rule between them was the seam, the line a man can't cross without being careful, and Everything had to sit under it, because a man's everything was always the thing he might lose down a hole. They never settled it. They just let the blacking dry and went down together with their sleeves rolled to the elbow.

The roof came in at the east face in March. Walter came up on the third shift with the others, but Eli didn't, and it was a month before they got him out. When the women washed the bodies at the bath house they found the two words still legible on each arm, the ink gone blue at the edges. Old Mrs Teasdale, who had the kettle that night, swore the rule had been drawn dead straight, so that the two halves lined up like a pair of gates left open. I've never known what she meant by it. I only know Eli's girl had them both drawn again in fine ink when she was grown, and kept the rule exactly where it was.