A printed paper tattoo form with black line sketches of an anchor, an infinity symbol, a dreamcatcher, a feather and a flock of birds, held in a hand.

Typical girl tattoo form with design sketches

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A printed sheet titled Typical girl tattoo form shows black line drawings of an anchor, an infinity symbol with the word Word, a dreamcatcher with feather tassels, a feather and a flock of birds. The sketches use fine, clean outlines with light hatching and no colour. The sheet is held up in a hand with painted nails against a wooden table and keyboard, with the form's questions and placement options visible below the designs.

Fine line Anchor Infinity symbol Word Dreamcatcher Feather Bird Hand

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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

Pass me that sheet off the bulkhead, lad, the one with the birds on it. Aye, that's the one the purser's clerk pinned up before we sailed from Bristol, the form for ship's ink. Typical girl tattoo form, it says across the top, as if there were such a thing as a typical anyone. I've scrubbed grease off it three times and the anchor's still bold as a debt.

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Nobody on the Marigold Ann ever filled it in. The bosun wanted his anchor, which he already had, and the apprentices wanted the infinity sign with WORD curled through it, which made me laugh for a week. Then Tilly Brandt, who could splice rope blindfold and swear in four languages, drew the dreamcatcher one wet night off Cape Finisterre. Her gran had hung one over a cot in Sunderland, she said, and it had caught every bad dream that came up the stairs. Tilly drew the feathers hanging off it like wet washing on a line.

The birds were there before we ever left the Thames. Tilly swore they followed us down the Channel, and she counted them at dawn: thirteen, then fourteen, then none at all once the sun came up over Lisbon. Somebody had to draw them down on paper so they'd stay put.

The line that asks for a word or quote I left blank, and then, with a stub of pencil and a wet thumb, I wrote BREAD in capitals, which is the only word a galley needs. Under placement I circled foot, upside down, probably. Then I folded the whole thing into the kindling box by the range, where it's been keeping the loaves warm ever since. Mind your fingers on the lid.