Small black tattoo of an ornamental crest above the words STAY STRONG in serif capitals on the inner wrist, with a raised hand and pink nails visible.

Stay strong crest tattoo on inner wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small black tattoo sits on the inner wrist, showing a scrolled crest with a central point above the words STAY STRONG set in two lines of serif capitals. The linework is solid and crisp with no shading, and the ink appears dark and even against pale skin. The hand is raised at the top of the frame with the wrist centred, and the plain background keeps the focus on the tattoo.

Lettering Forearm Crest Scrollwork Stay strong Wrist Text

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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

The nameboard came off the old Inchfarran ferry the winter the slipway rotted through, and Morag Tait would not let it go to the scrap man. She had it carried up the hill to the shed behind the shop, unbolted it from the wheelhouse door herself, and set it on two trestles under the one bulb that still worked.

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Under the ship's name ran a scrolled crest the foundry had cast in 1931, a point on top and curls either side like the ends of a ribbon. Someone had added words later, in a stencil that had worn to nothing except where the paint had sunk into the grain. STAY STRONG, it had said, in capitals with little feet on the letters. My father had painted them back on every spring, and when his hands went, I told Morag I would do it now.

I was no signwriter. I spent three evenings with a fine brush and a tin of black enamel, going over each stroke until the serifs stood up square. The crest was the hard part. The scrolls had to meet the old iron on either side, and when I finally stepped back, the board looked as if it had never been out in the weather.

Morag came up on the Thursday boat and ran her thumb along the bottom line, feeling for the edge of the new paint. She said nothing for a long while. Then she asked whether the ferry would still sail with those words on her, and I said she had sailed with worse. She laughed, the first time I had heard her do it since the funeral, and carried the board back down to the pier herself.