Black and grey tattoo of a nail cross on a forearm, with the word Galatians above it and 6:17 AMP beside it.

Nail cross with Galatians 6:17 lettering on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded cross made from two large nails sits across the forearm, with the word Galatians in a curved script above and the reference 6:17 AMP on either side of the upright nail. The nails use smooth grey shading with darker edges for depth, and the lettering is solid black. The photograph is taken straight on, with the design filling the centre of the frame against a plain light background.

Lettering Forearm Cross Nail Bible verse Text

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

You are the only one left on the fourteenth floor who still knows where the stopcock is, so when Mrs Okonedo's ceiling starts dripping you go up with a torch in your teeth and a bag of tools that clink like a bad conscience. The lift has been broken since March. You take the stairs, counting landings out of habit, past the graffiti that says someone called Jaz was here in 1998 and the stairwell window taped over for so long the tape has gone the colour of stewed tea.

Keep reading

The leak is not where the council man said it would be. It runs down the inside of the wall behind the bathroom panel, and when you prise the panel off there is a cavity, and in the cavity is a tobacco tin with a rusted lid. Inside are nine long nails wrapped in a page torn from a Bible. The page is the Epistle to the Galatians. Someone has underlined the sixth chapter in biro, pressing so hard the paper has torn through. You read the line about bearing on the body the marks of Jesus and think about Mr Hadley, who lived here before the Okonedos, who fixed every door on the floor with his own hands and never once went to church that anyone saw.

You take the nails down to the car park in the tin and leave the page on the bench by the bins, weighted with a brick, because it does not seem yours to keep. The rain has started, the ordinary sort that makes the flats look like they are sweating. You stand under the concrete overhang and turn the tin over in your hands, feeling how heavy nine nails are when they have been carried a long way, and you decide the drip can wait until Monday.