"Pimp my Rider!"

[Alta]

wow! Eilan I adore the Secret deck but your version is so improved. You really chose the areas to bling perfectly.

Rodney, great work. The flash may have blurred some of the detailing but I still get the overall,. much improved effect.

This is how I felt when I first saw Mi-Shell's coloured Ironwing, stunned and quite wanting one myself.

 

[rwcarter]

Thanks all.

Kissa, I bought a second Tarot Sutra just to bling. I also may trim the bottom border off to get rid of the often silly meanings. But I don't think I want to trim the whole thing (would make it too small). Could try coloring the borders, but I don't think black will work for this deck. Avante-Garde Masterpimp? Guess I'll have to add that to the list of titles I'm accumulating here at Aeclectic! In person the sword handles are more purple. The marker is blue, but the ink is definitely a purplish blue. I did enjoy changing/augmenting colors in the deck. I darkened the blue of the water in many of the cards, enhanced the orange colors in clothing and shoes, made the Wands actually brown instead of orange and introduced brown into landscapes that would normally have brown in them.

nisaba, not sure to whom you were speaking. I enjoy reading with, reading about, studying and now pimping the tarot. There's just not enough time in the day though to do everything I want to do. Pimping has just caught my fancy for right now. And since my pimping area is also my reading area, readings aren't gonna happen for a bit. (At least until the next RED Reading is due. )

Eilan, I'm continuing to play with the less is more school of pimping as wonderfully shown in your Secret tarot. I played with various glitter glues last night on my display copy Robin Wood. Haven't gone back in the study yet today to see how they've dried.

Alta, yes, it was raining hard and occasionally thundering and lightening last night when I took those pics. It was camera flash or nothing. A number of the details didn't come over from photographing the cards when laying flat. The sun is out today (at least for now), so maybe I'll be able to capture a few more details. I also should put the deck back together to see how the cherry red edges came out.

Not sure whether my next project will be the Sutra or the Cary-Yale Visconti. I also have multiple copies of various editions of color your own decks. Maybe I'll bling one from the ground up.... Today I'll try spray varnishing a few of the cards I'm not that happy with. If they get messed up, I have lots of spares in the wings that I can use to redo messed up cards.

Rodney

 

[Kissa]

Hi Rodney,

nisaba's comment were for me, since she knows a lot about my tarot faith crisis...

By all means, Rodney, as soon as you start "working on your Sutra, please post some pics" LOL... (this sentence may sound weird to some people hihihi)

 

[rwcarter]

Pics of the top and side of the cherry red and black pimped deck and a height comparison between the pimped and unpimped RWS. Even if I push down on my pimped deck with my hand, it's still thicker than my unpimped deck.

The true color of the deck is somewhere between the top edge and comparison pics. A photographer I am not!

Rodney

 

[nisaba]

Hi Rodney,

nisaba's comment were for me, since she knows a lot about my tarot faith crisis...

YEs, I'm sorry, Rodney, I should have quoted some of her post or named her.

Oh, and the RED exchange seems to be happening again, so it's time to clean off that pimping-table! <laughter>

 

[jcwirish]

Rodney, I think your cards looks great!

I am now in the process of coloring my new deck, My Tarot. I think it's turning out good so far, but this is going to take weeks! I won't be getting to my blinging for ages.

I've been using a sharpie to color my borders black. Are most of you using Sharpies, or do you know of another better alternative?

 

[BelovedK]

Sharpies work well for me and they don't smudge. I use 2 coats and it is great. I need to work on my deck today I'll post more pics.

 

[Kissa]

Pics of the top and side of the cherry red and black pimped deck and a height comparison between the pimped and unpimped RWS.

NICE!!!!! Cherry & Black, NICE!!!!!

That's what happens to a deck when you pimp it up, it gets its little cardboard ego really boosted up and starts growing thicker than a regular deck ;-)

My "homemade" Tarot of the Trees is as thick as two regular decks but your new RWS can still be handled, no worries! Your R(od)WS looks really great!!!

I need good markers or "sharpies", as you guys call them... but I don't think we have those here, something equivalent maybe..?? Are they like permanent markers? If so, we have them available only in 4 colours here... boooooring!

I think winter is the perfect time for altering innocent but unloved decks :-D - well, at least Finnish winter definitely is.

 

[rwcarter]

I test spray varnished a few cards yesterday, and for the most part I'm happy with them. The color on a few of the cards ran/splotched/splattered. I finished the rest of the deck tonight. (I sprayed in the garage and now the whole house smells of the spray varnish. I needed to have done this in the warmer weather when I could've opened windows....) A few of the colors ran/bled before my eyes, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Attached are three examples of the issues from the test spraying. In the 9 Cups, the upper right corner bled badly while the whole top of the card bled slightly into the top border. (It looks worse in the scan than it does when looking at the card.) I purposely exaggerated the drops in the 3 Swords (how can a heart be pierced and not bleed?), but the tips of the handles bled slightly. And I've already posted the Two Wands. Now there's some splatter by his feet that wasn't there before. The same colors on different cards didn't splatter/run/bleed, so maybe it was the amount of color that caused some spots to have issues and others not to. Some of the cards also warped slightly. Time will tell once I have the whole deck back together and shoved into its box, whether the warping will even out.

I also outlined the suit symbols in the Courts in the Cary Yale Visconti (which is really hard to do when you can't see what you're outlining!) and wasn't inspired to do anything else with the deck. So that's when I turned to the Tarot Sutra. It got a serious trimming last night. I like it a whole lot better trimmed! So much so, that I'm wondering whether it actually needs to be pimped.

Rodney

 

[rwcarter]

Downsides of varnish (at least the spray varnish that I used):

- after more than a week, the cards still reek of the varnish smell (I've got to find a place where I can lay them all out for a few days to see if they can be aired out)
- you have to remember to spray on a very thin coat of varnish if you use any type of markers on the cards cause too heavy a coat will cause the marker to run/bleed (additional coats can be applied after the first coat has dried)

The desire to pimp the Tarot Sutra has subsided now that the deck is trimmed. The Adam Fronteras deck may be the next candidate. Before I start that though, I think I want to do some actual study with tarot....

Rodney