So, I’d been kicking around this idea for a while, wanting to make my own set of tarot cards. Not just any cards, though. I wanted something a bit different, something with a bit of grit. And then it just, bam, hit me: skeletons. Yeah, skeletons. Not in a creepy, Halloween-y way, mind you. More like… the bare bones of it all, you know? The stuff that’s left when everything else is stripped away.
Getting Started with the Bones
First things first, I had to gather my supplies. It wasn’t anything too fancy, really:
- Decent quality cardstock, thick enough so they wouldn’t feel flimsy.
- Some fine-tipped pens because I wanted a hand-drawn vibe for some elements.
- My trusty old tablet for the digital bits, because let’s be honest, drawing 78 unique skeletons by hand? I’m not that patient.
- And a good pair of scissors, or so I thought. More on that later.
I started sketching out ideas. The Major Arcana were the first ones I tackled. How do you show The Fool as a skeleton? Or The Lovers? It was a fun challenge, actually. I spent a good few evenings just doodling, trying to get the right feel. Some looked terrible, honestly. Just awful. Like a pile of bones that tripped and fell. But eventually, a few started to click. I tried to keep them simple, focusing on the pose and maybe one or two key symbols for each card. I didn’t want them too cluttered.
Then came the digital work. I scanned my better sketches and started refining them. Cleaning up lines, adding some basic shading, that sort of thing. This part took way longer than I thought. Each card felt like its own little project. There were days I’d just stare at the screen, moving a ribcage a tiny bit to the left, then back to the right, wondering if anyone would even notice. Probably not, but it mattered to me, I guess.
Printing them out was a moment of truth. Seeing them on actual cardstock, well, they started to feel real. But then came the cutting. Oh, the cutting. My brilliant idea of using scissors for 78 cards? Terrible idea. My hand was cramping up after the first ten. I eventually caved and borrowed a paper guillotine from a friend. Much, much better. Still tedious, but at least my fingers weren’t about to fall off.
More Than Just Cards
You know, working on these skeletons, all these bare-bones figures, it got me thinking. It reminded me of this one time, years ago, I was working on this massive community art project. We had this grand vision, everyone was super enthusiastic at the start. We were gonna build this huge, interactive sculpture, something really ambitious.
We poured weeks into it, long nights, lots of coffee. And then, about halfway through, everything just started to fall apart. Funding got weird, a couple of key people bailed, and the whole thing just… deflated. It was gutting. All that work, all that passion, and it felt like it was for nothing. We were left with, well, the skeleton of an idea, a bunch of half-finished parts, and a lot of disappointment.
I remember sitting in the studio, looking at the mess, feeling completely raw. Stripped bare, you could say. Just like one of my tarot skeletons. For a while, I didn’t want to touch anything creative. What was the point, right? If it could all just collapse like that.
But then, slowly, I started picking through the wreckage. Not to rebuild that same project, that ship had sailed. But to see what was left. What materials were still good? What lessons had I learned? What was the absolute core of what we were trying to do? It was a painful process, not gonna lie. Like sorting through bones to see what kind of creature it used to be. But eventually, by focusing on those essential bits, I started to see a new path. A smaller project, something more manageable, rose from those ashes. It wasn’t the grand thing we’d planned, but it was something. And it was built on a much more solid foundation because we’d been forced to look at the bare-bones truth of what we could actually achieve.
It’s funny how things come back around. That whole experience, feeling so exposed and having to find the core, it’s kind of what these skeleton cards represent to me now. They’re about seeing past the surface, getting to the nitty-gritty, the essential structure of things. Good and bad.
So yeah, after all that cutting and thinking and remembering, I finally had my deck. My very own Skeleton Tarot. They’re not perfect, some lines are a bit wobbly, and the printing isn’t professional-grade. But they’re mine. Every single bony finger and hollow eye socket. And when I use them, I feel a connection to that whole process, the stripping away, and finding what truly remains. It’s a good feeling. A solid feeling.
