Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Snow globe tattoos on upper arms

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The left image shows a snow globe with a desert scene of a cactus, rocky mountains and a moon, set against purple and orange sky and surrounded by a cloud outline. The right image shows a snow globe with a palm tree, a pale sea, a setting sun, birds and a sparkling star, framed by blue flowers and green leaves. Both use bold black outlines with filled colour and a decorative base.

Traditional Upper arm Desert Cactus Mountain Moon Cloud Palm tree Sea Sun Bird Star Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming sideways off the estuary since eleven, pooling under the tarpaulin of Dilys Crane's stall at Saltmarsh market, and nobody had stopped to look at the snow globes. She wiped a dome with the hem of her cardigan and watched the glitter settle over a tiny sun that had been setting over the same painted sea for thirty years.

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Her father had turned the bases from lathed beech and painted the zigzags himself, a band of diamonds at the rim like the tiles in the old swimming baths. The desert one had come from a cousin who sent postcards from somewhere dry, and it had sat unsold on the shelf since spring, its cactus leaning toward the cloud-edged moon. Dilys had always thought it looked like a place where nobody ever needed an umbrella.

At half past one a woman in a yellow mac ducked under the awning, shook out her hood and asked for the one with the birds. "I've only ever seen the sea from the other side of the glass," she said, and Dilys understood that the woman had not come for a souvenir at all. She wrapped the globe in yesterday's paper, pressing the corners flat the way her father had taught her, and counted out change with wet fingers.

When the woman had gone, Dilys lifted the desert globe and shook it hard. Snow rose over the mesa, drifted past the moon and settled on the cactus. The rain eased to a drizzle over the car park, and for a minute the light through the dome looked almost like evening. She set it back on the shelf, facing the street, and left it there.