Traditional style tattoo of open scissors with a dark blue ribbon and small stars on the upper arm, with pink shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Scissors and ribbon on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A pair of open scissors with a dark blue ribbon crossing the blades sits on the upper arm, with small four-pointed stars scattered around it. Bold black outlines and solid fills are combined with pink shading behind the blades and gold accents on the handles. The design is centred on the arm against a plain grey background.

Traditional Upper arm Scissors Ribbon Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had the shears in her apron pocket before the wasps found the windfalls under the Bramleys. Her uncle Dafydd was up the ladder pretending he did not need any help, and each time he reached for a branch the ladder shifted and he swore at it in Welsh, which Nell had long since stopped correcting. The late August light lay thick and yellow over the rows, and the air smelled of crushed fruit and cut grass.

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The blue ribbon was tied round the oldest tree in the orchard, a length of silk gone soft with forty summers of weather. It marked the day the first picking could begin, and by custom whoever held the gold-handled shears on the morning of the fair snipped it free. Her grandmother had done it. Nell's mother had done it the year she came home from the city with her hair cut short and a look that nobody argued with. Nell had never once thought about who it might belong to next.

On the morning of the fair, the vicar's wife held out her hand for the shears. Nell looked at the ribbon, then at the crowd of children waiting at the gate with their baskets swinging, and she cut the silk in two. One half she wound round the handle and handed back. The other she tied to the lowest branch, where any child could reach it. The first apple of the year came loose a moment later and rolled straight into a boy's bucket, as if it had only been waiting for permission.