Revamping Playing Cards as Personal Oracles

Um. (That's "yum.") These look like they're going to be wonderful.

I'm encouraged by all this creativity to pull out my coloring book and crayons (we all must work at our own level!).

Actually Debra, there are some nice stained glass patterns you can download online and colour in much like a colouring book.

Then you could scan them in and resize them and put a border on them, print them out, and paste them onto cards.

I love crayons!

I spent hours today tracing and cutting the front and backs for these. 104 pieces. I am so punchy, but they're ready to glue and I've done a glue sample and pressed it for 12 hours and the adhesive was fine.

I was thinking about what to do with my other old deck that I found. I quite like the idea of doing abstract art with watered down casein paint and my dip pen and ink. I can use light watercolour paper for the 54 card fronts and just glue wrapping paper on the back again.

I get very uptight when painting and tend to seek perfection, but I'd like to do this, and think it would free me up too. I like casein and I like using pen and ink. Because these are for playing cards and I don't want literal, realistic pictures, I though abstract art might be good.

Maybe a summer holiday project where I can just spread out and mess around without getting all hung up on product. Processing. . .

ahh, no reverses

I wonder if pages from my wallpaper sampler books would be too heavy?

AJ said:

ahh, no reverses

I wonder if pages from my wallpaper sampler books would be too heavy?

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The Civil War illuminated deck I bought has one-ended courts--nice touch and historically authentic. Reversals are like everything else--applied human thought. You can take the thought away and make your own system.

As far as wallpaper samples, they work but you have to use methyl cellulose (wallpaper paste) to glue them--nothing else works. They are heavy--the other thing you can do is scan them in and print them on regular paper, but they'll need a fixative applied.

I have a big tub of methyl cellulose I use for bookbinding as well. On the sample I did for these cards, it worked fine but you need extra pressing time for the card to dry completely and prevent warping. I am adjusting for that and pressing for 24 hours.

That's one of the reasons I used non-plastic playing cards--you get a better bond.

I just spilled a 50 gm packet of seed beads all over the exploding drafting board. Hence, I have moved onto the table on the sunporch. Oh for a real studio!

In my continuing quest to have 1,000 projects going on at once, this is my prep work for the revamp of the Delta Air Lines card deck I have. It's in better shape than the Bicycle deck but slightly smaller in width. I will be painting the fronts for these with casein paint and pen and ink on paper. The indices will be hand lettered with my classic wonky calligraphy.

I've traced all cards with my template on light watercolour paper. I found these sheets in an old house we moved into in 1979. Still I carry them about waiting for the perfect opportunity to use them. Apart from a bit of foxing on the edges they are okay. I have labelled them and placed like cards from each suit in a row.

When I'm painting, I'll do a set of a particular cards, say all the Aces, and this will provide some continuity in colouring and lettering. By having them on a sheet I can go over the edges and trim them down later so I get complete coverage and neatness.

The gold paper on the left is wrapping paper I bought last week. It was too modern for the other deck but looks good for this one for the backs.

So, it's going to be freeform and funky--that hand of the artist thing going on. Spontaneous abstract art.

I dutifully cut out my 54 card backs yesterday and I have them neatly stored in a Ziploc bag with their template.

I noticed the backs when I found the deck but didn't pay too much attention. See how well they go with this gold wrapping paper? There is a tiny edge of the original card around the outside to frame the backing paper.

The painting on the card back does look abstract-y so I will retain the flavour of the deck.

I was going through an art book looking for ideas and hit upon the idea of monoprints, so I might try to incorporate that into a few cards if I get stuck for ideas.

[p.s. and I saw an artist who uses watercolour and coloured pencil on monoprints. So now I'm thinking casein, acrylic ink, and coloured pencil. Yummy. The card areas are so small 2 1/8 x 3 3/8 or 54 mm x 85 mm, so I can't use a brayer, will have to use a brush on glass and maybe some drips. . . .]

Bicycle deck is all glued front and back, just waiting for the Spade pips and a few Clubs to finish drying and pressing before starting the collage tomorrow

Firing up the scanner today to get the court card and significator images into Photoshop to modify and print.

They look fantastic room! I look forward to the next step. The colouring of the hearts cards looks luscious.

LB

Little Baron said:

They look fantastic room!

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Thanks, I thought the red looked appropriate for hearts too--well, it was a must, right? The Diamonds are on a two-tone brown paper with bright gold highlights, so they are quite blingy which doesn't show up well in the photo.

I was a bit disappointed in the two lighter papers as I wanted the backgrounds all to be darker, but that's what happens with this kind of project, you have to work with what you can find.

I like that kind of challenge though. ;-)