Cool idea? Stupid idea?

[bunsen_h]

Do-it-yourself tarot decks.

Here's how it works.

1. You create or find digital images appropriate for the tarot deck of your dreams. Draw them, scan them, find them on the net. Whatever. Using image-processing software (e.g. the GIMP freeware package), crop / rescale to 600x900 pixels or 1200x1800 pixels.
   
2. Digitally add an overlay (provided to you) which adds borders and the appropriate text to each image.
   
3. Print the images as 4"x6" pictures, either at a digital photo-printing place (around 19 cents per image, hereabouts) or on your own equipment if you've got it.
   
4. Print a back-of-the-card pattern (provided to you) on each card. You can do this with a laser printer.
   
5. Laminate, using (for example) librarians' book-covering film.
   
6. Trim the edges.

Things come out looking something like this.

Cunning plan? Really bogus, for some reason which I (not knowing much about tarot) am missing? There'd be a certain amount of time and work to prepare the pictures, of course, but what else?

Comments

[kattale.livejournal.com]

Cool. Is that Phil Foglio?

Not bogus at all, i think. Tarot is better if you make it yourself.

There are two concepts behind this idea - if you go the "magical energy" route, it is believed that colouring your own tarot deck invests it with your personal energy and charges it with magic.

If you go the psychological route, choosing art and symbols that are meaningful to you would create a meditation tool that you would theoretically connect with on a deeply subconscious way.

Or you could just have a Tarot deck with art that you like.

The only comment I have is that it might be a bit obvious to anyone of an artistic nature who wants their own deck...

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

The artwork is by Phil and Kaja Foglio -- I don't know for sure how they share it, but I'm under the impression that Phil does most of the pencilling and that Kaja does more of the colouring. The guy in the dungeon is indeed Phil's rendering of himself.

[beable]

I have off and on over the years had designs on making my own tarot deck. In high school I drew a few cards of one. More recently I have designs on using LJ-icons to create tarot cards, completely with appropriate quotes that symbolize the cards meaning to me. So far I have only done one though - the tower (using a Heather Dale quote and Firefly image)

[metalana.livejournal.com]

I did a make-your-own-tarot-card workshop at Womynspirit this fall (a Samhain-weekend retreat north of Toronto). Low-tech collage of magazine pictures in this case. We started the workshop by passing around a bunch of the wackier commercial tarot decks, for inspiration.

I'm trying to figure out why Bunsen Honeydew, Skeptic and Practical Joker, is interested in the question... either he doesn't realize that there is no one authority on divination tools such as tarot, or he plans to make 76 cards worth of a joke.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

I know that there's no one authority on them -- the diversity of decks and interpretations of them makes that very clear. I did a quick search for information about making one's own deck, and didn't see anything; perhaps I didn't use the right search terms, or simply gave up too quickly instead of wading through lists of "Free!" tarot web pages.

The idea came out of a chain of thought which ran more or less like this (insofar as it can be set out clearly):

* fajrdrako posted about her favourite decks.

* What she really needs is a Doctor Who / Torchwood deck.

* What sort of images would that involved? Emperor, that would be Rassilon. Other images hard to find. Not a lot of knives/swords (there are a few), wands/staves, cups, coins. Sun, Moon, World, no problem.

* What other media/fandoms? Emperor: B5, of course. B5 has Hanged Man (G'Kar's father in the vision), Magician (Elric), Sun, Moon, World, Priestess, others. Swords/knives, some wands/staves, some cups and coins.

* Oh yeah, Girl Genius just had a good picture of Krosp as Emperor. Hmm. Hanged Man, there's the Jaegers. Fool, maybe a juggler or something else from the Circus? Oh, even better, there's Phil in the dungeon. Magician, Master Payne. Priestess, what's-her-name the Geisterdame. Lovers, Gil and Agatha of course. Say, all these images are on-line, I'd just have to download them. It'd be fun to try a couple just to see how they'd look.

* If they were sized 4"x6", I could print them at the photoprinting setup at the Independent Grocer near my house, quickly and cheaply.

* The simple thing would be to make a template to generate overlays to add the borders, text, and so on. From a template, each overlay would be easy to make. Say, then I could put the overlays somewhere for other people to use, if this works.

And then I thought more carefully about some of the steps and details.

78 cards worth of a joke would be somewhat more (tedious and repetitive) work than I usually do for that kind of thing -- mostly the part about finding and processing all the images. From the template, now that I've got the process down, creating all the remaining overlays would probably take me another hour and a half or so.

[metalana.livejournal.com]

P.S. my colleague Francois van Heerden says Hi.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

I couldn't place the name, did a quick Google, found that he's con chair for Ad Astra. Now I'm trying to remember the face... I'm sorry, I'm terrible with names, but please say hello. :-(

[con-girl.livejournal.com]

Laminated cards will not feel nice and will not be shufflable.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

Hmm. The usual photoprints are a bit flimsy for this purpose. I suppose the cards could be printed onto fine card stock -- I'm sure it's available somewhere -- though probably not at the usual photo printers. What about printing the card-back pattern onto adhesive-backed paper and sticking that to the backs of the photoprints? Or can you think of a better way of making the photoprints more sturdy?