Tarot Crafting!

 So, recently, quite by accident, I found a Facebook group about tarot crafting. But it wasn't what I expected, not just designing your own tarot decks. These crazy people were ALTERING their purchased tarot decks!!!

Whaaaaaaa?

They were trimming off borders and coloring the edges and some crazies were even relabeling the cards or even switching the cards around or turning tarot decks into oracle decks! It was madness!

So I scrolled like mad through posts in the group seeing the things people had done to their decks and I was a little terrified. Imagine putting my clumsy hands on one of my precious decks! I spend a great deal of time studying and asking people about what they did, and I got referred to a YouTube channel, Boho Tarot:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDoXE8hLiEZ-2pun5Iqyqhw

I just ate up those videos. And I loved the thought process that went in to altering decks, the idea of spending significant time with my deck, handling each card individually and really putting my own unique touch on the deck. It just seemed like such a wonderful way to bond with a deck and really make it mine. 

So, trimming a deck sounded like crazy talk to me, why on earth would I cut a deck with my imprecise hand? But edging, now that might be something I can do. So I grabbed my Azathoth Tarot, a very much mostly black deck, and a black calligraphy marker with a wide tip.

This is what it looked like before:

Why such a dark deck had white edges anyways, I'll never understand.

And after:

Looooooook how smooth and perfectly blended it is with the black edges! A subtle difference, I'll admit, but I loved it. 

Even if this is how my hands looked after:

This made me bold. I was at Michael's with Shannon and happened to stumble across a pack of Prismacolor markers on clearance for half off and I knew that was a popular brand with other tarot crafters. And what fun is a new hobby if I can't use it as an excuse to buy new crafting supplies?

By the way, this was back in March. I've been slacking on my blogging, get ready for some massive catch up posts.

So, ever since Cari bought my the Biddy Tarot planner for Christmas, I've had a pretty steady daily tarot card pull practice. And I've been selecting a different deck every month as a way to bond with my frankly absurd collection. Having as many decks as I do makes me happy, but it can be hard to form a bond with so many decks. This has worked really well. And in this particular month, I was working with my Yoshitaka Amano deck, and honestly, just wasn't super clicking, so I was definitely looking for a way to bond with it more. Coloring it is! I chose a red Prismacolor marker as my tool of choice.

Before:

Aaaaaand after:

Even better, Prismacolor markers didn't bleed all over my hands so I didn't get that all over! I did develop a habit of laying the cards out separately after coloring them though just to make sure fresh marker ink didn't bleed all over though. And you can't see it in the picture, but due to the way the cards were cut when they were manufactured, each card has a small paper nub right at the center top and center bottom that soaked up the marker ink and bled into the card a bit, but not dramatically. Also, as the cards have sat I have noticed that the borders have created a faint yellowing bleeding from the edges around the border of each card. But that's kind of the risk you take when you alter a tarot deck.

At the end of the day, I'm still happy with it and my way of looking at it is that the cards turn out the way they're meant to turn out. Little unexpected things like that make my cards special and unique to me. 

So I'm feeling pretty confident at this point, and I think I'm ready to edge the deck that really made me want to start trying this, my beloved Shadowscapes deck. I read somewhere that later editions of this deck have been silver gilded on the edges and that thought just makes me want to cry, I can't even imagine how gorgeous this deck would be with silver edges. But I definitely want it looking as metallic as possible. After discussing with my tarot crafting group, my conclusion is paint pens. So I buy a silver one and go for it.

Here is the before:

Now, a paint pen was a bit trickier than a marker, due to the whole wet paint issue, so I got out my old foil tape covered board that I used for working with worbla during my Xena costume work and I would carefully paint the edge of a single card and then lay it down without touching the edges or dragging the card around and smearing the paint. It took much longer than with a marker. I would only do like 10-15 cards at a time and then let them dry for a day before stacking them up and doing more. So this whole process took like a week. If I'd used my bigger board instead of my smaller one to lay out the cards I could have done more at a time because I'd have had more space to lay them out, but oh well. When I was done, it looked like this:

As you can see, I got a nice shiny metallic silver, but something I hadn't considered was the fact that the edge of the card actually pushed down into the chisel tip of the paint marker, which resulted in a slight silver micro border all around the front and back of the cards. It didn't really show on the front due to the silvery grey border that was already there, but it's definitely visible on the back. Luckily, I don't think it looks bad, the silver matches the colors of the deck really well.

Side note- I learned recently that there is a Czech version of this deck that's actually printed larger than this deck, and it's going to be reprinted on October 30th, so I will 100% be buying it. I love this deck so much and the artwork is so pretty, it just NEEDS to be on larger cards.

So, next up I wanted to try edging a deck with an ink pad. I went and bought some pretty metallic ink pads and decided to edge my Mucha tarot in a pretty copper.

No before pictures here. 

Edging with an ink pad was different, it was messy and wanted to create micro borders like the paint pen, but the ink wiped off the fronts and backs super easily so I could clean off the micro borders. I also had to carefully lay out the cards and let the dry like I did with the paint pens. It was tedious and kind of a pain. I liked the way it turned out, but I definitely don't think ink pads are my favorite edging method. Markers are definitely my favorite, easy and quick drying.

After that I just went nuts with the markers. I needed to edge as many of my plain decks as I could.

My Vixen deck, edged with a tan marker. Subtle, but I love the way this came out. 

The Fae and the Ferns, a deck I picked up at a con a while ago, edged in pink, because a purple that blended in would be boring.

My Fullmetal Alchemist deck, edged in red, because I have a surprising number of black decks and I didn't want to edge all of them in black, that would also be boring.

So these two were a bit of an experiment.

The one with the spiral design, in case you can't tell, is my Final Fantasy deck, and the other with the map is my Avatar deck. The Final Fantasy deck I edged with a black sharpie and the Avatar deck I edged with my black Prismacolor marker. 

As you can see, the sharpie has a rainbow-y kind of oil spill black look, and the Prismacolor has a smooth solid black. It was interesting to see the two types of black side by side. All in all, I think I'll probably stick to the Prismacolor in general unless I deliberately want that shinier black.

I happened to have a marker that was nearly the EXACT shade of the backs of my Studio Ghibli deck, so that was an easy choice.

I think this is a little hard to see in the pictures, but I did my Sailor Moon deck in a nice dark blue that matched the backs.

Next was my Egyptian tarot, another black deck, and I stuck to the Prismacolor marker. I learned pretty quickly with the other black decks I've done that if the black decks have black borders you can get away with not following a strict one card at a time policy. With anything else, you ABSOLUTELY MUST go one card at a time or you will get color bleeding over the edges. But black decks with black borders being edged in black, who can tell if it bleeds? It's nice. 

Next was my Lisa Frank Majors deck, and I chose bright pink here. It only makes sense, right? I mean, it's Lisa Frank! For some reason I got a bit more bleed with this one, if you look at the orange corner in the first picture you can see the pink bled into the card a bit. But again, that's a risk you take when you alter your tarot decks. Sometimes things don't go the way you planned. But that's what makes them special.

Next, the Good Tarot, edged in a dark green that I'm quite proud of how perfectly it matches the backs.

And Harry Potter, edged in I think the same tan I did on the Vixen deck, I love the way it matches. 

Last, my Legend of Zelda deck edged with a gold paint pen, and this time I leaned into the gold micro border, I was really happy with how the gold looked on the cards. 

I have a few other decks I edged and haven't taken pictures of yet, and a few others I'd still like to do, I'll put those up when I get them done. And I did eventually get brave enough to try deck trimming, but I think that needs a separate post. I really love edging decks, I love customizing them and making them specially mine. It's such a great way to spend time with my decks too. I was so nervous at first, but now I feel like it's made my decks unique and special. Plus it's a really great way to spend time at home, since we can't really go out now with the pandemic nonsense.