Here are two of the tarot cards i've tinkered with so far. They're a bit rough, and i go back and forth between "THIS IS PERFECT" and "uh... huh?" Eloquent, i know. :D
For the minor Arcana, i'm going to have them represented by elements, not symbols. So instead of Cups, it'll be Water; Wands becomes Fire, Swords becomes Air, Pentacles becomes Earth (alternately: Stars - i'm still undecided on a few of these things).
Temperance was the first card i actually put together; looking back, i'm wondering if i need to tweak it a bit. It's similar enough to the Rider-Waite deck (you have an angelic figure with cups/water symbolism present) that i might want to go back and change it. Not because of any concerns about appearing derivative, but because one of the things i'm trying to go for is having a card speak for itself - the meaning should be relatively clear.

I think i did a much better job with the Empress card: a beautiful woman, desire, fertility, nature... all that good stuff.

(For context: these are not 100% finished cards; these are flattened images that have been resized for show. The actual cards that i'll be printing are poker-sized cards at 300dpi, which means they're roughly 2000 pixels high and average between 9-15 MB per card. Some things don't resize well; the Empress is a bit sharper/grainier than intended, which i'll be fixing in the final version. The black bits in the corners are cutting guides; those are the bits that will be removed.)
As far as the back of the cards goes, i'm considering using marbleized paper. It's random, makes each card/deck unique, and doesn't waste any of my precious, precious printer ink. :D
For the minor Arcana, i'm going to have them represented by elements, not symbols. So instead of Cups, it'll be Water; Wands becomes Fire, Swords becomes Air, Pentacles becomes Earth (alternately: Stars - i'm still undecided on a few of these things).
Temperance was the first card i actually put together; looking back, i'm wondering if i need to tweak it a bit. It's similar enough to the Rider-Waite deck (you have an angelic figure with cups/water symbolism present) that i might want to go back and change it. Not because of any concerns about appearing derivative, but because one of the things i'm trying to go for is having a card speak for itself - the meaning should be relatively clear.

I think i did a much better job with the Empress card: a beautiful woman, desire, fertility, nature... all that good stuff.

(For context: these are not 100% finished cards; these are flattened images that have been resized for show. The actual cards that i'll be printing are poker-sized cards at 300dpi, which means they're roughly 2000 pixels high and average between 9-15 MB per card. Some things don't resize well; the Empress is a bit sharper/grainier than intended, which i'll be fixing in the final version. The black bits in the corners are cutting guides; those are the bits that will be removed.)
As far as the back of the cards goes, i'm considering using marbleized paper. It's random, makes each card/deck unique, and doesn't waste any of my precious, precious printer ink. :D
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Take care! <33