So. I'm a pretty serious sucker for Tarot Kickstarters. I've backed many and every single one has been kind of a wonderful experience, whether I'm supporting an artist I already love, or impulse backing a pretty thing like I'm a goddamn crow that MUST HAVE THE SHINY THING.
That's it. That's me. MUST HAVE THE SHINY THING.
You get to give your money directly to the artist, and you get all kinds of crazy fancy extras that no one else gets, and a lot of times you're getting a deck that only a few hundred people will have. Plus you're usually not spending NEARLY what everything you get would be worth at a retail price, which a lot of times won't even be an option if you don't back the Kickstarter. I LOVE the specialness of backing a Kickstarter for a tarot deck.
Anyways.
I stumbled across this one. it originally claimed to be a 133 card ONE TIME ONLY printing of an insane chaos deck where all of the cards were pulled from different decks, just a wild collection of cards and that whole idea fascinated me. So I backed it. Showed it to Rachel and she backed it too.
Side note: when I backed it, it was the first day and it was only about half funded at the time and I was worried about it not getting funded, so I shared it with my tarot trading groups on Facebook, who then proceeded to ruin EVERTHING by being as terrible as people always are on the internet, there was criticisms of the artist for their "High" base level goal, and then criticisms for how they were using the money and it just got too negative for me so I deleted my post. Why internet people gotta suck so much?
Anyways.
For your information, it's called the Alleyman's Tarot and this is the Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/713books/the-alleymans-tarot?ref=user_menu
The lore around it is kind of wonderful and I just love it. And despite my worries it went on to be backed by about 19000 people and make $1.4 million dollars to become the most backed and most funded tarot project of all time. It was super exciting to watch and I loved being part of it.
After the Kickstarter ended, there was a Facebook group that sprung up for backers of the deck, and people were actually breaking up decks and swapping cards to create their own random chaos decks with other members of the groups and I was completely blown away by this idea. The thought of breaking up a deck was so foreign to me it didn't even make sense. At first I had no interest in participating in the trading, I could never break up any of my decks, although I did have a small collection of random tarot cards, replacements I had ordered from other decks, an extra that came with another deck I purchased, alternate versions I had printed for my self created decks, things like that.
Originally I thought I'd just add those to my Alleyman's deck, but then. Last weekend, Clover and I were thrift store shopping and I just happened to stumble across an oracle deck for a few bucks that I picked up and immediately offered for trades. So now I am building a chaos deck of my own and I am completely intoxicated with the idea of the universe bringing me a deck.
My Alleyman's tarot Facebook group has been very active, and a little while ago, someone made a post about how they already collected wine bottle labels and pointed out that they could very easily be used as tarot/oracle cards. This immediately brought to mind my Prophecy wine bottle collection. I have had a habit of saving cool looking wine bottles for some time, and these ones had Tarot art on the labels. I used to line to tops of my cupboards with them, but it's been quite a while since my cupboards have had enough space for wine bottles on top. And now that I've bought a house that's not likely to change.
However, these wine label collectors pointed me to techniques to cleanly remove wine labels and I decided it was time to turn my Tarot wine labels into actual Tarot cards. It's what I always wanted them to be anyways and it will free up some shelf space if I don't have to store bottles.
So, the process was really very straightforward. I read about chemicals and cleaners and sticking the bottles in the oven, but the method that seemed least likely to damage the label was filling the bottle with boiling water.
I just boiled water in the teapot and funneled it in, I had to be careful because the boiling water would bubble in the funnel and splatter, which was quite hot. I also had to use a hot pad to handle the bottle because, FUN FACT, if you fill a glass bottle with boiling water it makes EVERYTHING VERY HOT.
Weird.
After just a few minutes with the hot water, the adhesive softened and melted enough for me to get my fingernail under the corner of the label and gently peel it off. I had to be careful, I had a few small rips that had to be glued back in place once I was done but in the end it was successful enough. I had all six varieties of Prophecy wine, I removed the labels, glued them to some basic posterboard, and then I spent a great deal of time fishing through my scrapbooking paper stash to try to find paper that would match the labels, since as wine bottle labels they weren't exactly standard Tarot card sized. I feel like I did a pretty good job matching them up with paper, and I'm pretty pleased with how they came out.
As you can see, I have the Fool, a Pinot Noir that was unremarkable, the Lovers, a red blend that was pretty good, the High Priestess, a Sauvignon Blanc that I honestly don't remember, the Emperor, a Cabernet Sauvignon that I was just happy wasn't terrible after my past experience with cabs, you never know what will happen, the Star, a Pinot Grigio that I probably mixed with ginger ale just because that's what I prefer to do with Pinot Grigios, and a Rose, that was fine, but I'm just not into roses. So as you can see, I was unimpressed by the wine, but really, I was just there for the art.
But I think I did a pretty damn good job of finding paper to match the cards. I cut them out roughly with scissors and then used my guillotine paper cutter to trim them down to JUST BARELY SLIGHTLY larger than a tarot card. I then got my hands on some textured gold Cricut vinyl that I cut out and stuck to the back of the cards, then trimmed down to make the cards exactly the right size. Since I'd made the cards JUST BARELY SLIGHTLY larger, once I had the backs on I could trim everything down to the right size and the backs would match perfectly, including corner rounding with my corner rounding punch.
After some debate with myself I ended up coating the fronts with my satin finish polycrylic spray I happened to have leftover from Battleshots. I didn't want a glossy finish, but I also didn't want to dull the metallic gold highlights of the label art. The satin finish did exactly what I wanted it to do. I ended up very happy with what I'd done so of course I had to share what I'd done with both my Alleyman's tarot facebook group and my tarot crafting group. For like a day I felt like the most popular person on the internet based on the absurdly enthusiastic response I got to my post. last count, over 200 responses. My cards are gorgeous, and I'm proud of myself.
AND THEN.
Some darling admirer of my work points out that there are in fact SEVEN varieties of Prophecy wine.
WHAAAAAAAT.
He informs me it's a buttery Chardonnay and the art on it is the Empress. Now, after a bad, BAD experience with a buttery Chardonnay in a Bota Box that was so bad that the only way to drink it was to mix it to the point I couldn't taste it, I was not looking forward to trying another buttery Chardonnay. But the Empress is my soul card, I must have it.
Turns out the wine itself wasn't hard to find, I stopped at an Albertsons earlier today and it was just there, easy fuckin' peasy. Honestly, drinking it was harder. I've had worse wines. I wasn't mad that I was drinking it, but I wasn't happy either. I tried to add some lemon, thinking that would brighten up the flavor a bit, and that was a mistake, the lemon clashed horribly and actually made it worse. It was bad. So I drank it straight and just decided to be okay with it. I found some matching paper, and gave it the same treatment as the other labels.
I love her. She's so elegant and beautiful. Even if her wine was bad.
The debate I'm having now is that I have edged the cards in a Zig calligraphy pen that claims to be "Gold". But......
That...... barely qualifies as gold. I am considering re-edging in the gold paint pen I used on my Zelda deck, but I realize that will create a gold microborder, so I haven't decided if that's a good idea yet. Maybe I'm overthinking it.
Whatever.
Regardless, I now have 7 self created tarot cards for my chaos deck created from some of my favorite wine labels and decorative paper I have had since the early 2000s. These cards are special and I love them.
Aaaaaaaaaaand now I look at every bottle of wine wondering if it would make a good tarot card.....
