Stolen Thyme

So, how do you make your own tarot deck? It’s easy – get your great idea ready, draw a card, repeat that 78 times, then it’s time for production, marketing, and glory. But there’s usually a problem somewhere in that “idea-draw-repeat” cycle.

Inspiration is pretty unpredictable. One moment you have it, the next it’s flown away, leaving you feeling like you’ll never make anything worthwhile ever again. Whether you’re an experienced artist or you’ve never picked up a pencil before, creating 78 interconnected art pieces will involve a lot of experiments and changes in perspective. More than likely, you will look back at your first tries and wonder what you were thinking.

To be able to pull through this chaos, and keep stepping forward even when it feels like you’re going nowhere, it helps to make a plan in advance. The details may change, but taking some time to map out your deck now can make the work ahead feel more like filling in missing pieces of a puzzle, and less like stepping off a cliff.

To help you get started, these next few pages have activities to plan out your own project: your traditional references, your trump suit, your other four suits, and how they’ll all fit together. If you have just some loose ideas floating around, this can help you catch them and find a place for them. And if you’ve already started on your work, you might be able to take a step back and look at where you’re going. Whatever your mission is, I hope that this module will help you make a map for your own project, so you can go out and explore without getting lost.