Well this has suddenly turned into a bronco ride! The website for the deck is finally up, the paintings are going up for sale in batches, the fundraiser for printing is launched, and meanwhile the images have turned into a bunch of squabbling teenagers.
You can find the webpage for the deck here The painting sale page is still a work in process and I am adding paypal buttons in batches each day.
Stuart, my partner and an artist/graphics designer, has been busy working on light balancing of the images getting them all ready for printing and we hit a speed bump. When you prepare an image for print, it has to work within a template of safe zones, cut zones and bleeds. As we learned with the Quareia Magicians deck, printers sometimes shift and bits at the bottom or top can get lost, or the image can drift.
So the names and numbers of the deck images have to be within a safe zone. Fine… I had the idea of a transparent band across the bottom of the paintings with the names in the band…. all good…. Until you start doing that with magically alive images. To be within the safe zone, the names would have to cut across magically sensitive areas. That one is on me – unlike Stuart, and our co artist Cassandra for the Quareia deck, I am not an experienced artist. So when I was painting them my total focus was not on how artistic they were, or how graphically planned they were so that text could be overlaid, my focus was on the magical trigger points in the images, and ensuring the powers were expressed as closely as I could given my limited skill set. That way, the power could flow unhindered.
We were both sat looking at the rows of images and at the safe areas of the templates, and realised there is no way to put names on them, as the block would cut across power lines. So we thought about numbering them only, but that wouldn’t work either – teenagers –Im not wearing that!!!
Then we both slapped our foreheads… gods we can be dumb at times….. add on a bottom strip with the name. It would shorten the images a little, but that would work without interfering with the magical pattern of the image. So we are going to look at that this afternoon, but if that shrinks the image too much, then they will be cards with no names or anything else on them.
That would be a nightmare for people looking up the meanings while learning how to do readings with them. But if we need to do that for the magical integrity of the images, then tomorrow I have to have a long conversation with our book formatter to see if he can do an image index for the front of the book…. he is sure to hate me after that conversation!
And I thought doing a deck would be easy…hahahahaha…. Nope…. But my goodness I am learning so much!
And thank you to everyone who has started pre ordering the decks, buying the paintings, and donating to help get us over the line in the fundraiser.
We have until the end of the year to raise the amount – I am too old for pole dancing, so hopefully the sale of the paintings and decks will drag us over the finish line!
Josephine McCarthy 
Question: what’s your funding target?
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Our target is £12500, and we are trying to get to print by the end of the year, but we will see what happens. We are already a quarter of the way there thanks to painting sales, so our fingers are strongly crossed!
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Truly amazing work. I hope to be able to save up and buy the inner library, just something about it♡. Also can’t wait for my deck to come in as well, I love to support you in everyway I can and will soon be starting my journey in your course as well. Thank you Josephine for all you do. Bessed Be.
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I love the idea of a deck without names.
Nightmare learning curve indeed, but once it’s learned it cannot be more beautiful than that.
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Thanks… Stuart is currently playing around with names…. but we shall see..
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O I also love the idea of no names. I’m already using imagery as a means to wordless communication.
It’s much clearer and less chance of one’s own conditioning affecting the impressions received. The trick is to pay close attention to the initial perceptions and responses before the inner interpreter turns on its critique!
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Exactly Sundari,
Lots of people cut out the names on cards for this reason.
Never took the time to do it but always wanted to. Now it’ll save us hours of cutting that we’ll have to put on learning this advisor by heart.
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Could you maybe just put the names on the back side of the card?
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HI Liam, no that would not work… the backs are printed as one repeated image. to put names on the back would be a lot more expensive as it would mean individualised images on both sides. We will just have an image index at the beginning of the book
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I see. Well, we could always put post-its on the back while we’re training. I agree with the other comments. There’s something nice about keeping the art undefiled with words. Sometimes a word can be loud on a card.
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I think having the cards without names on them would be quite workable. As other commenters have already said, it has its positives too. Don’t worry too much and just do what feels right. I can’t wait for the deck to be ready!
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Thanks… we have decided that is the way to go… just the images..
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I wonder if there could be a cheat sheet folks can consult as they’re doing they’re readings. A separate full sheet of paper that you set in front of you on the table (ie separate from the index in the book). It wouldn’t need to be in the book at all, it could just be a pdf folks download for free on the Quareia website. It might need to be two pages actually to fit all the thumbnail images, but that’s no biggie.
Any of us students could make it. Heck, I’m happy to make it if you’d like, so that it’s no work for you other than adding it to the website. Folks can opt to print it out or not.
Just an idea… 🙂
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We wouldn’t be able to print something like that, but I am going to ask our formatter to put an image/name/page number index at the beginning of the book. I will also extract it, turn it into a PDF and put it up on the website and Quareia for folks to download… thank you for the idea!
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Perfect, sounds like an excellent plan. 🙂
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argh, I meant “as they’re doing their readings” (it works better to proofread before hitting the “post comment” button, not after, lol
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I just love the art you painted in your new deck! Ordered one of the paintings last night! – Underworld.
You are brilliant and double thumbs up to this ambitious project!
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