Gold Dust Woman

 I know, man, this is crazy. I go like six months without blogging and then I just fucking spam you. 

Anyways. So, you might know if you exist on planet Earth right now, the world sucks. Just, really sucks. Damn pandemic. So as a result, I didn't get to go to a real Halloween party this year. God I miss cons. I need to make costumes! It was the perfect year for Halloween too. It was on a Saturday, there was a full moon, and I just bought a house. Combine that with the fact that my birthday is the week before Halloween, and I desperately wanted to have a housewarming/birthday/Halloween party and actually be the host for once. But no. No parties for us. My closest friends and I did decide that we would have a little private party though, we can't just not do something. So it was just going to be me, Cari, Rachel and Sarah. And we were still going to dress up. 

Obviously I didn't want to do anything too crazy. Recently you may have noticed I've been leaning into a boho witchy hippie feel for my style, and I'd even recently made myself a cool fringed kimono that felt very Stevie Nicks. That thought made my costume plan simple. I was gonna be Stevie Nicks. It would be easy and cheap, I had most of what I would need on hand already, and the dress I made could just go into my regular wardrobe, since Stevie Nicks is my style inspiration right now anyways.

I did more shopping than I should have, I just can't resist going the extra mile for the accessories and the details. 

I wasn't trying to get an exact look, more just channel her style, but you could say I was more or less going for this:

I could spam you with a hundred pictures to show you what I was thinking, but really I was just sort of averaging out Stevie's hippie gypsy look.

To start with, I had debates on the hat. I thought about doing a floppy brimmed round hat, even bought two options from the thrift store and went to great lengths to put a supporting wire around the excessively floppy brim of one of them and get some fabric spray paint to paint it black, which was shockingly difficult to find probably due to all the fucked up supply lines for stores right now. (FUCK COVID)

In the end I decided I wanted the top hat look which I should have just gone with from the the beginning because hilariously enough I already owned a black top hat. Some time ago Rachel and Cari and I thought we were going to dress as the girls from the Lady Marmalade music video, and I was going to be P!nk, since I'm a big fan of hers. And she wears a top hat. I had bought a few supplies for the costume when our fourth person completely bailed out on us right before Halloween, leaving us stranded and me with a handful of supplies I then had no use for. (We KNEW she was a flake, we KNEW that was a risk, but we really wanted to do it, so we just hoped really hard, and in the end got nothing.) Luckily I'm a crafter and no supplies ever go to waste, so I didn't bother to return the stuff I bought, I just held onto it thinking I'd find a use for it. One of those things I bought was a black top hat. I bought some fancy feathers and dug up scraps of lace and velvet from my fabric stash, hot glued some stuff to the hat and I was good to go.

For the record, I removed the rhinestones, I decided they looked too showgirl-y, not what I was going for. And yes, that rose IS made out of scraps of my Captain Hook coat! I swear, that thrift store fabric find is just the gift that keeps on giving. 

I also had a pair of black lace gloves that I bought during my steampunk phase and literally never wore, I just cut the fingertips off of those and they were perfect. 

For jewelry, I bought several thrift store rings, nothing special just some fun big flashy pieces, and I knew I needed to layer several necklaces, most importantly was a crescent moon necklace of some form, Stevie always wears a crescent moon. I already had one pretty filigree pendant I'd bought ages ago, and I should have just gone with that, but I wanted something solid, and I love an excuse to focus too hard on details. I actually had a hard time finding a solid silver crescent moon, in the end I ended up with one made out of a cluster of pyrite crystals that was pretty cool looking. I'm also happy to have that in my jewelry collection. I also bought a gorgeous fluorite crystal to add to it. That was just cuz it was pretty, I have plenty of other crystals I could have worn. I just wanted it. I layered that with a long round stone pendant and a gold chain with a tiny opalite bead that my daughter got me for my birthday and had a nice layered necklace look. 

For shoes, Stevie usually wears massive thick platforms of some form, but as I am almost a full foot taller than her teensy little 5'1" frame, that wasn't really gonna work for me. Luckily in one of my thrift store adventures I found this absolutely gorgeous pair of black suede knee high boots with like a 1"-1.5" heel in basically new condition in my size that I would have bought even if I didn't want them for my costume, they're beautiful. And so comfy!

Now, Stevie is blonde and in the past I have had trouble with blonde wigs. I was going to just wear my old Princess Peach wig to avoid spending money I didn't have to and just deal with a kinda shitty wig, but in the end I couldn't do it. I cracked and bought myself yet another shitty cheap wig from Walmart, but weirdly enough this cheap shitty wig had a nice natural blonde color and and good looking wave and was actually surprisingly flattering on me. I think the problem with the Princess Peach wig is that it's YELLOW not blonde and turns out I look awful with yellow hair. I'm probably going to save this Stevie wig and replace my currently Princess Peach wig, it looks so much better on me. I guess I shouldn't have tried to look like cartoon Princess Peach. Y'know, cuz I'm not a cartoon. 

I didn't bother at all worrying about Stevie's eye color, this wasn't THAT intense of a costume. 

I struggled with the shawl. I had to have a shawl of course, that was so required it's not even funny. My original vision had something black with a red or pink flowery pattern and a fringe. Maybe with sequins, a little sparkle in the shawl is totally acceptable. And in chiffon or something similar, for good drapey flowy ness. I searched thrift stores for weeks. I bought three different scarves, a skirt and a dress in an attempt to at least find fabric I liked and turn it into a shawl. I even straight up bought some black chiffon and fringe trim thinking I could sew appliques on it to get the flowers. 

Right. Sew appliques onto chiffon. THAT sounds like fun. 

It was never right. 

Side note, the reason the dress didn't work:

The dress was a very nice full length halter top chiffon flowery thing that was really very pretty. It was blue, and the color wouldn't work, but I figured I could dye it.

Ignore the fact that I'm clearly wearing the wrong bra for this dress. Isn't it pretty? 

So I bought some red fabric dye specifically for artificial fibers. Hell, I bought TWO bottles because this dress is 100% polyester and I knew from experience it didn't want to be a different color. (RIT DyeMore, if you're curious, in whatever they call the red color. I don't remember.)

After a long bath in a hot pot of super strong red dye, I got this:

Looooooook at those pretty pinks and purples! I love it so much! Once I put this on and took pictures I knew I had not bought myself fabric for a shawl, I had bought myself a new dress. There was no way I could take this apart for a shawl.

Anyways. Finally I bought a scarf off of Amazon that wasn't too expensive. I really was trying to keep the cost down for this costume and I wasn't doing a great job. But when the scarf arrived it was so SMALL. Barely any wider than one of my basic winter scarves. That did not make me happy. So I returned it and in a fit of frustration just bought a nice one that finally made me happy.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C18G86J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

There were literally three other Stevie Nickses in the reviews of this shawl. So clearly this was the way to go. It's beautiful, by the way. Sparkly and flowy and gorgeous, I love it. No red flowers, but that's okay. I'm very happy with it and I'm not sad I have it now. 

So, the last and the biggest piece, the dress!

I debated for a long time whether I should do like a tiered flowy skirt and a tank top or a dress or what, but in the end I settled on dress. I tried to just buy something, but didn't find anything quite right. And then I stumbled across something that had the exact fabric look I wanted.

Is that not. Just the worst. Thing you have ever seen. God, I don't think I've ever worn a more unflattering dress, I look like I'm wearing a goddam green lace potato sack. And what the hell is that weird lace insert at the neckline? The damn thing is nearly choking me as it is, you afraid someone is gonna see my collarbone? I hate it so much. It's so bad. The horror this picture fills me with is indescribable. However. The lacy fabric is super pretty and the alternating godet panels have a nice flowy gauzy texture, the skirt is a full circle skirt and the dress. Is 100%. Rayon. Which means it will just looooooove to change colors for me. So. I throw that dress into a boiling hot pot of black dye and let it simmer to get some of the horrible out. (regular RIT dye this time, god I love a natural fiber.)

Yessssssss. Boil, you abomination.

When it was done I had this:

Okay, let's be honest here, we all knew it wasn't the green color that was the real problem.

Originally I had thought I could just remove the sleeves, but after putting it on I knew I would need to completely redo the top part of the dress. So I cut off the top of the dress an inch or two above where the godets ended and just.... just..... just fucking THREW the top part away from me. I didn't even want to look at it. 

I started on a new top, I wanted just a basic V neck tank top style top. I did consider just making this a skirt and wearing one of my black tank tops with it, but I knew I could do better than that. 

In a box of old vintage patterns Sarah had given me a while ago, I found this:

Literally a pattern from the 70s, which is wildly appropriate for my 70s singer costume. It's so old, look how yellow the paper is! But it was a very simple basic shape and that's all I needed.

For the fabric, I dug scraps out of my scrap box. The solid black lining was actually the jersey like fabric liner from the skirt I bought thinking it could be an option for my shawl. And I decided I wanted to do a layer of lace over that just to add more lacy texture to the dress. Luckily I had several large chunks of black lace in my collection from my steampunk phase.

Why, yes, that large chunk of black lace is a piece of a dress! This was a thrift store find ages ago that I had taken apart for other reasons, and luck of all lucks, this is a STRETCHY lace! Which means no zippers or buttons or anything, this can be a pull over the head dress! And I had EXACTLY enough to make the bodice. 

So I sewed that all up, I made the shoulder straps by just cutting the hem off the original sleeves of the dress, they were almost exactly the perfect length. I did have to add darts to the bust that the original pattern didn't, and I'd just like to say that those were the most perfect smooth darts I've ever done in my life. They were the same length, came to a nice smooth point that didn't create sharp points on my bust and they made a perfect fit for my chest. ON THE FIRST TRY. I didn't have to adjust them at all, I just pinned and sewed and was done. It was glorious. I've never had that happen before, and probably never will again. Really, this whole thing was going so smoothly I should have been suspicious. 

So I had the bodice done. I could have just attached it to the skirt and called it good, but I really wanted something layered and flowy and frilly. So to start with, I pulled out the black chiffon I had bought, and basically cut out a circle skirt, except I didn't round off the corner so it would be square shaped, giving me an uneven handkerchief hem. I then sewed black satin ribbon all around the hem. I put the bodice on my dress form and pinned this part of the skirt below it so I could see what I was making.

So, next I wanted to layer the original dress skirt overtop of this, but I also wanted it to have the same square handkerchief shape as the chiffon layer. So I folded the skirt into quarters and laid it out on the floor. (DAMN I need a proper cutting table.)

I marked the middle and then about 9" up on either side. It wouldn't be a perfect square, but it would have a similar shape that would echo the chiffon layer at least. I then cut from my 9" mark to the middle.

I could have gone higher up to get a perfect square but I didn't want to lose too much length. To hem this piece, I actually took a long, long piece of ruffly black lace that I believe also came from my steampunk phase, I think it was leftover from that short burgundy bustle skirt I made, and sewed it all around the hem. I had to manually gather in a few places and carefully space it out, but I managed to have EXACTLY enough lace to do the whole hem. Man alive, I cannot believe how often things worked out exactly right for this outfit. 

I pinned this to the dress form over the chiffon layer. Next I had some big chunks of a different black lace that I just sort of free form pinned overtop, creating a little hip swag on one side and just some random extra lacy layers. I wanted the whole thing to be a little hodgepodge. 

I even like the way the shades of black aren't all exactly the same.

For the waistband, I didn't have any plain black elastic, but I did have this sparkly gold 2" wide stuff. I considered using the gold side, but decided I just wanted it to be all black, so I just made a black fabric tube for it out of scraps of the black jersey that was the lining of the bodice, since it would stretch with everything else. 

Attached the skirt and the bodice to the waistband, carefully pinning and going slow on the skirt to make sure I'm getting all the layers, and in the end I had a cool goth hippy witch dress!

I'm sorry, guys, black has got to be one of the most frustrating things to try to take pictures of. It just doesn't want to show the details. 

Halloween came, and I put it all together!

Oh right, I also added this little black corset style belt overtop, I already had that and it fit in well with the outfit. 

I was super pleased with how it came out, and I had a great deal of fun swishing around in all my flowy layers. Although I did learn I need to shorten the shoulder straps, I was adjusting those all night. It was a great costume, and now I have a sweet black lacy dress!

EVEN MORE TAROT CRAFTING and some wine glasses. And stuff.

 Yeahhhhhhhhh I'm not done yet. But this is really just tarot extras, not more card trimming or edging. Just some other stuff I did.

First of all, one of my favorite artists for tarot decks recently came out with these lovely suede satchels for his tarot decks. I got one with a Kickstarter he launched a while back for a Lenormand deck he made, and they're very nice, just a neat little package to wrap the deck up in that extends out a bit to create something like a mini-mat for laying out cards. I loved the one with my Lenormand deck, and was highly tempted to buy some for my other decks by this artist. If you want to see, they're right here:

https://www.jamesreadsmerch.com/

Seriously. Check him out. His art is so beautiful. I've bought multiple decks, and prints that are hanging on the walls. 

In the end, I talked myself out of spending unnecessary money, because I was fairly certain I could make something like that. And what do you know, I totally did!

For my first one, I measured out a rectangle that would fit my largest deck and guidebook. Basically I cut a long strip of fabric the right width to wrap around and extend out. I also cut small rectangles for the ends roughly approximating how wide I would want the satchel to be to have enough space for a deck and a book. 

I also made a liner out of silk, since silk is a good classic wrap for tarot decks. The outside is actually made of scraps from the shorts I made for Danny when we dressed as The Producers a while ago, and I got the silk from an old robe I bought in college and dyed red. I used the trim to hide the seams on the outside since I didn't have enough of the brown suede to cut it all in one piece. The cord was salvaged from some old pillow shams I disassembled years ago. It's actually the same set I made that red brocade corset so many years ago. Feel free to backtrack through my posts to look if you like, but it's really not relevant.

It's honestly hard to describe exactly what I did, but you know, cut, sew together, sew lining in. I'm afraid I can't really give you a clear tutorial on this. If someone really wants one, let me know and I can try harder to break it down, but right now I don't think it's necessary. 

It's a really nice way to safely bundle up a tarot deck and a book, either a guidebook or a notebook or whatever and take it with me. I can tuck a pen into the cord when it's wrapped around as well.

I also made a smaller one that just fits a basic deck, and it's fine, but it's honestly just not as useful.

I also decided to do something to make it easier to lay out card spreads. I had a spread cloth I had been using, it was basically a sarong wrap I'd bought and would lay down before reading cards, but the thing with regular fabric is that whenever I try to pick up a card off of it I would always grab the fabric too. I wanted something like the playmats I used to use back when I played Magic, with the value of some Magic cards I knew it was a good way to protect valuable cards. And obviously I need a cool custom one. Luckily based on my custom printed decks I'm familiar with custom printing things. And I decided I wanted it to look just like the cloth I had been using, since I had been using that basically since I started reading. 

So I took a picture of the cloth, tweaked it a little to clean up shadows and stains on the fabric, and upped the color saturation just a bit for fun. Sent it in on the biggest mat size I could get.

I also ordered some for Cari and Rachel for their birthdays, but I don't have pictures of those. Cari's had a cool Harry Potter Ravenclaw picture and Rachel's had an image of The World from the Wild Unknown tarot deck, which is another favorite of mine and hers. So, you know, not something I made but my idea, I guess?

I also made a few more wine glasses. I really slowed down due to the fact that I was living in a very small apartment for about a year where my frankly excessive wine glass collection just barely fit into the woefully inadequate cupboard space. But I did make this:

I love this thing. The pattern was made with random chunks or clay rolled into a tube and then sliced off in circles and pressed all over the glass. The letters were made using fondant cutters. I also recently made similar ones for Rachel and Cari, because who doesn't need a wine glass for "fuck it" days?

I also made this one:

That, if you don't know, is one Fat Gum from My Hero Academia, one of my favorite characters from that show. He's sweet and caring and just amazing. And very very fat. Perfect for a nice stemless wine glass. 

So, I think that's the main crafty things I've done that's completed. Also, in case you missed the past tense of me living in an apartment I BOUGHT A HOUSE. 

It was a crazy situation, all the sudden my mom has decided to move to a bigger house because my grandma needs to move in with her and she had this great opportunity for a great house so she took it. And in the process of this, she says to me, jokingly, "Want to buy my house?" 

I laugh. Hahaha, like I'm in a place where I can buy a house. I mention to Stu, "Hey, isn't this a funny joke my mom made? Haha." And instead of laughing, Stu goes, "Wait a minute."

And it all just fell into place from there. We were able to get approved for a loan at a great interest rate, mom knocked the price down for us, Stu's parents helped with the down payment and suddenly we were moving into a house. My mom's house, of all things. I was even able to contribute more than I thought I could due to the oh so useful corona virus stimulus check the government handed out. 

Since then I've had several house related projects, I repainted some cupboards, replaced some fixtures and installed some new towel bars, toilet paper roll holders and whatnot. I got super handy with a drill and a screwdriver. I even learned to install blinds all by myself. It's been great, and I'm so happy to be out of that apartment. I have a lot more projects planned, but there's only so much I can do at once, you know?

Also, if you think I'm not doing a Halloween costume just cuz corona virus means we can't have a proper Halloween party, you got another thing coming. But you'll have to wait for that one. :D

MOOOOOOOOORE Tarot crafting

 Two posts in a week after like nearly 6 months of silence? Crazy!

But like I said, I got some stuff to catch up on. 

So, in my last post you saw my adventures into the wonderful world of tarot deck edging. I knew people trimmed borders off their decks as well and had looked into it, but was just suuuuuuper scared. So I did the smart thing and I went on Wish.com and bought several knockoff tarot decks for a couple of bucks each. That would give me something safe to experiment with. In particular there was one deck I had seen that used the traditional Rider-Waite images but it was HOLOGRAPHIC. And I loved it. But it also had a large black border with Chinese card titles underneath, since, you know, Chinese seller. Makes sense. 

I also wanted to experiment with rebacking a tarot deck, which is apparently a thing as well. People glue cards to scrapbook paper or use contact paper or whatever to change the backs of decks that they don't like. Knockoff decks would be perfect to try that as well. 

(Also, in case this needs to be said, don't buy knockoff decks off of Wish.com. They're tiny and the quality is absolute garbage. You get what you pay for, you know? Also, the artists that work so hard to create these beautiful decks don't get any money from knockoffs. Buy legit, support artists!)(The Rider Waite deck art is public domain so no shadiness there. And the decks I did buy knockoffs of I either already own the legit deck, or immediately regretted my choice and bought the legit version.)

Anyways.

After the usual weeks and weeks of waiting, my cheap experiment deck arrived. 

Look how shiny it is! I really like it, even if it is just a knockoff deck. 

So, I watched a lot of Boho Tarot's videos about trimming and talked to many members of my Facebook crafting group to figure out the best tools to use so I could make sure I got the best results possible. I had a sliding paper cutter already from a brief stint with scrapbooking, but based on my experiments on various extra cards the sliding cutter created a slight raised edge. I could somewhat burnish it out with the back of a spoon, but I still wasn't happy about it. So based on advice I bought a small Fiskars guillotine style paper cutter and a highly recommended corner rounder punch that had multiple sizes. I got them here, in case you're interested:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NUY5Q2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0076FJ7SS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I also bought a basic little $2 geometry ruler set with clear plastic 45 and 90 degree triangles and a little 6 inch ruler to be able to create guides for reliable trimming.

So when I was getting ready to trim, I basically carefully lined the card up on the cutter and then used some washi tape to tape down the 90 degree triangle to brace the back edge of the card, to make sure I lined up each card exactly the same way.

It's also important to cut one side at a time for all the cards, that way you only have to reset your ruler once for each side. As long as you make sure each card is straight and securely pressed against the ruler, you will get nearly factory perfect cuts.

This is after I finished trimming and rounding the corners. See how nice and even all the cards are? That was my biggest worry, that the cards would all be slightly different sizes, but this was very nearly perfect, and very satisfying. 

See how much nicer it looks as full art with no borders? But as you can see, that card back is a problem. A: It doesn't match the fronts at all. It's not a bad design really, but it looks so flat and jarring with the holographic fronts. And B: because of the titles on the bottom of the card I trimmed more off the bottom than the top, leading to an off center design. Unacceptable. 

I didn't love the way rebacking decks seemed to make the decks so much thicker so I did a lot of research on the absolute thinnest methods to reback. In the end I decided craft vinyl, the kind of thing you'd put in a Cricut would be the best choice. Plus I could get a nice shiny holographic vinyl that would match the front. I bought this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078H9HLRM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Basically I measured the width and height of a card, multiplied it to get the total surface of vinyl I would need and then I spent a great deal of time carefully measuring and cutting out rectangles just slightly larger than the card. I then went one card at a time, carefully peeling off the backing and adhering the card and then trimmed off the excess with an Xacto knife and the most careful and steady hand I've ever tried to have. It was a lot of fiddly and careful work. And it did make the deck thicker, but it looked much nicer.

You can see in the first two pictures how much thicker it got, it was like a quarter of an inch, so really not bad. But being small and thick does make it a bit interesting to hold. I love the new backs though, everything looks better.

Everything is shinier in video!

I also edged the deck, because as you can see, the edges weren't super pretty. It was not easy to edge since the card backs did not perfectly line up with the vinyl. There is a strong argument to be made for putting the untrimmed cards on the vinyl and then trimming them to get a perfect match but that would have needed much more vinyl that would have been wasted in the end when it was cut off, plus I had heard members of my Facebook group complain of gunky sticky residue left on cutting tools due to the adhesive back of the vinyl, and I didn't want that. My method was a bit more tedious and less precise, and I did somewhat lose my perfect trim job, but my way was more economical.

The edging came out like this:

As you can see, due to the vinyl I did not get a nice smooth color. But it looks better than the raw cut white edges. 

So in the end, I decided that trimming is totally doable and can be done perfectly and can really improve a deck that needs to lose the borders. I will be very selective of the decks that need this however. Rebacking is really more of a hassle than it's worth and I'm not really a fan of the effect it has on the cards, even if it does look better. 

Before I go on to show you the other decks I trimmed, there was one more step I needed for this deck. Naturally, since I trimmed and rebacked it, it was no longer going to fit in it's original box, I needed to make a custom box for it. Here my tarot crafting group came to the rescue again and directed me to this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZaxtDQj17k&list=WL&index=17&t=3667s&ab_channel=Cuilfaen

That is a step by step walk through for creating a custom sized box for a tarot deck and it was exactly what I needed. You don't get a step by step walkthrough of what I did here because, damn man, it's right there in the video. 

I had enough vinyl left to cover the top of the box in it to match the deck and glued a few elements of the original box to it. The bottom was just done in black, and I left enough space from the top edge of the box that I'm able to keep a small quartz crystal in the box, and this shiny little deck became my purse deck for tarot on the go!

Next up, one of the knockoffs was a copy of my Shadowscapes deck, which as you know is my favorite deck, and I loved the idea of having a little purse version of it. Lots of other people trimmed their copies of the Shadowscapes deck, the art just pops when you remove the borders, but I didn't want to do that to my beloved deck. However, little mini knockoff? No problem!

I set it up exactly the way I did before, but daaaaaaaaaamn the quality difference was bad. I had to cut off way more of the artwork than I wanted due to cards being printed offcenter or crooked or higher or lower on the cards than the others. You can see from the pieces I cut off the differences in the art placement.

You can see that the design on the back lines up differently because of this as well. Although trimming did solve one problem.

If you look at the left and right edges of the card you can see that the image is duplicated just on the edge to make it stretch to the edge of the card. Trimming did mostly remove that. Because of the not matching backs I'd have been tempted to reback, but these backs actually match and I don't really want to make a habit of rebacking, it's not something I really liked the result of. 

I did have one bit of drama because of the bad print. When I trimmed The Moon card, the image was so crooked that my original setup didn't take the whole border, so I had to reset and recut that side on all the cards I'd already cut to make them match.

Look how bad that is. Seriously, guys, don't buy knockoffs. In the end, the trimming fixed the crooked printing, even though I had to cut off pieces of the art. Trimming couldn't fix the lesser quality of the print, you can definitely see the difference if you put it next to my legit copy.

SERIOUSLY GUYS. Don't buy knockoffs. Get legit copies, support artists!

Anyways. Next up was edging the deck. I didn't feel like doing the paint pen for this version, so I just did a lightish purple Prismacolor edge:

The marker did bleed into the card a bit more than I'd seen on other decks, probably due to the cheap cardstock it's made of, or potentially because it was trimmed? I'm not sure honestly. 

I also made another custom box using the same instructions as before and again, decorating it with pieces of the original box.

I had one other deck that I wanted to trim, and it was the reason I started playing with trimming in the first place. I have the anniversary edition of The Enchanted Tarot with it's massively oversized cards. They're beautiful, but goddamn they're monsters. Holding and shuffling the deck is just impossible.

So, trimming this deck was a little harder because the cards were too big to fit comfortably lengthwise on my trimmer. I ended up taping a ruler sticking out off the edge and then taping some cardstock to the end of the ruler for where I wanted to line up the end of the card. The nature of it was such that I couldn't press the cards as securely up against it so it's not quite as perfect height wise. I spent a lot of time taking tiny slivers off the top and bottom of the cards to get things as even as I could. I also wasn't taking off all the borders, I still needed the titles on the card as I'm not as familiar with the imagery in the deck, and I wasn't confident I could recognize the cards without the titles. After trimming it through I did make it my deck of the month for my daily card and I would cover the titles when drawing the cards and try to see if I could identify it, so I'm better with it now than I was. Anyways, this is how it turned out:

It's still a bit oversized, but more just longer than a regular deck and not so wide anymore, which definitely helps. And if I get good at reading the deck I'll take the title off as well. 

Of course then it needed a box. It originally came with a velvet bag which would have still worked, but I don't like keeping decks in bags, I just feel like it's not protective enough.

This box was my best work yet, it fits the deck so perfectly I want to cry. And I love how the patterned paper looks in the top part of the box. The outside is decorated with gold tissue paper crumpled up and then pasted on with glue. If I do trim the titles off I think I'll just put little pieces of foam in the top and bottom of the box to keep the perfect fit so it doesn't slide around.

There's one other edit I'm thinking about doing to this deck, but I'm not sure if I will or not. One of the members of my Facebook group did this to her deck:

Looooooooook at the corners! She basically just used a decorative punch on all the corners and I just love it! It's so pretty! I bought several decorative punches with this idea in mind, but it practice mangled several pieces of cardstock so I was too scared to use it on the deck until I can get more reliable results. Plus I'd have to redo the bottom corners anyways if I trim off the titles. So that's on hold for now. 

I think that's it for my tarot deck editing crafting for the moment. I definitely still have plans to do other things, but that's all I've done. I still have many things to post up here, but I think that's enough for one post.