Black typewriter-style lettering reading she believed she could so she did, set in stacked lines along the side of the ribs.

Typewriter quote along the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a side torso with a black tattoo of the words she believed she could so she did, set in stacked lines in a typewriter-style font. The lettering is solid black ink with crisp edges and no shading, and it runs vertically down the ribcage. The background is plain and light, with a dark lace bralette and a loose dark top framing the tattoo.

Lettering Ribs Quote Text Typewriter font

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

The typewriter came up the river on a salt barge, wrapped in a sail that had once been somebody's wedding dress. Mother Oda said it was older than the town and older than the sluice gate, and that it would only work for a person who already knew what they wanted typed.

Keep reading

Nobody in Kell Ford could read the little letters on its keys, so they made a rule. Whoever sat at it had to say their words aloud first, and the machine would print them down, one short line beneath another. Ysolde the net-mender went first, in the wet season, when the gate hinges had rusted through and the council had stopped sending men. She cleared her throat, said her piece, and the keys went clack, clack, clack until the paper held a tidy column of black words.

They pinned the page to the wall of the ferry house where everyone could see it. It read, one short line under another, she believed, she could, so she did. Ysolde did not read it again. She took the hammer and the long iron pins from the boathouse, and by the time the tide turned she had the gate swinging on new hinges with the water pushing hard against it. Nobody asked her how she knew it would hold.

When Oda died they wrapped the machine up again and sent it back downriver, and the barge captain swore the keys were still warm at the far bend. Ysolde kept her own copy folded in her apron pocket, soft as cloth, and on every bad morning she unfolded it and said the words out loud before she let herself look at the water.