At first ...

I had no clue what I was doing. 

The very first thing I had to do was learn how to make rubber printing plates. I watched a lot of youtube, and to be completely honest a lot of TikTok. I played around with shape, line strength, negative space, and color. 

As my vision became clearer I began to look at the history of Tarot design. So many artists have published their own take on the historic cards. I found so many beautiful interpretations but still felt the most drawn to, what I think is the most classic, the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck (pictured to the right). I think a lot of it had to with personal nostalgia, this was the deck my dad used to use to do my readings. I also loved how classic the designs were. In a piece with such a young demographic, I really liked that this deck connected my work to the past. 

Once I had my source deck, I had to choose the cards I wanted to work with. This was definitely the hardest part. Each deck has 78 cards, each with differing and multiple meanings. It took me about two weeks to go through the research process and choose my final 4 cards: The Moon, The Sun, The Lovers, and The 7 of Cups. Once I had my cards I went about altering the card designs to complicate the cards' messages. You can see my initials designs below. I then scanned and flipped my designs so that I could transfer them onto the rubber mats. From that point, it was all about meticulously cutting away at the excess rubber to create the final stamps, the video below. The last step was printing. I tried a lot of different methods but eventually built a rhythm, that helped me to produce a lot of stickers in as little time as possible.