Okay, so here's where I started with my card back designs. I'm honestly not very good at designing things from scratch, I'm much better at altering and editing and compiling. But these were some of the ideas I had. They're totally reversible, but I'm kinda meh. I had serious issues deciding if the cards should be reversible or not. Usually I make sure they are, but there were just some gorgeous ideas out there that weren't reversible. However, Cari likes to read with reversals, which means it might actually matter for this deck. I struggled for a long time.
This is still my favorite, simply because I feel like it goes with the card front so well, and is way better than anything I can do myself, but here we run into the reversible issue.
And just for reference, these are some potential other ideas I found.
In the end I went with the Hogwarts crest mirrored over the same parchment background I used on the front of the card that I had carefully edited to be reversible. It's simple, straightforward, matches the tone of the deck and clean. And of course I don't have the image here so I'll have to put it up later.
That was it though! After that the deck was finished, and in about two weeks too. When we sent it to print, we upgraded it a bit, and added gold gilding on the edge of the cards, and put it in a custom print tin box that had the Maruader's Map on it. Also, a little bit later on, Erin wanted to get in on this gift, so she gave me some money that I used to buy a blue silk scarf to wrap the deck in. That Cari could also use to do readings on if she wanted. I went with blue because Cari is a Ravenclaw. Rachel and I also ordered prints of the deck, but without the fancy upgrades, just plain edges and a regular cardboard box. It turned out beautiful, though, and Cari absolutely adored it. Success!
