Trim or not?

Anam Cara

I love trimming (and using my trimmed) decks.
And I am definitely NOT a scrapbooker (no offense
to those who are)

I simply love the feeling of the cards after trimming,
and the look and shuffle of the cards after aging.

There are some I would never trim (the MRP decks,
for instance) but others I won't hesitate to trim,
when I have the time.

Right now I'm almost finished aging a Book of
Thoth that I trimmed....just a few more cards
get sandpapered (yes! ~gasp~ Sandpaper!)
then they go for a dip...I've created the "antique"
deck I will probably never have otherwise...
not to fool anyone, just for my own pleasure.

:heart:Cara
 

Carla

Carla said:
I love borderless decks so I'm sure I would love trimmed decks. I love looking at images of them here. But I'm not good at cutting and too cheap to invest in a guillotine and corner rounders. I'd trade for one or buy one off someone, though!

Ha ha ha! Just looking at this thread and found this comment. How many decks have I trimmed at this point? I just this week trimmed the stone borders off my Druidcraft, the leaf borders off the Druid Plant & Animal Oracles, and the wood frame borders off the Touchstone. I can trim quite well with a simple pair of cheap but sharp scissors and a simple 5mm corner rounder. And I LOVE it! :)
 

Chiska

I thought about trimming - but then I started thinking about the backs. Like Waking the Wild Spirit. Sure the borders are bit funky, but trimming them would ruin the image on the back of the card.

Personally, I would be driven to distraction with uneven back patterns. The possible lack of symmetry would just give me fits.

But I will enjoy always looking at what others have done.
 

Miss Divine

I trimmed my Universal Waite and Tarot of the Magical Forest this past summer. I like them much better this way. My fingers weren't sore from using the scissors (cuz it's my profession), but that corner rounder ayayay. I had to push down on it really hard so my thumb was really sore.
 

AnneLien

Some decks I like trimmed,like the Druidcraft tarot, Plant oracle, ...
Other decks I just totally regret and I rebought them ... Spend a lot of money on them eventually... In the future, I will NEVER trim a deck again!
 

Le Fanu

I don't think a guillotine is the way to go so that's no excuse. Just good quality scissors with a snip length wihich is longer than the length of the card. I have some terrifying scissors which must be about 30 cm long.

I have triumphantly trimmed;

Crystal Tarot
Tarot of the Master
Large Thoth
LoS Classical Tarot
Ancient Tarot of Bologna
LoS Lenormand Oracle

Probably others too.
 

Cassandra022

yep for my first trimming project i bought this small guillotine thing and a pair of scissors. after like, two cards, i stuck with the scissors.
 

Pen

Like gregory, I bought an extra Thoth especially to trim (well, a number of them, to find the best printing). I love it - the artwork sings without those dulling borders.

At the moment I'm colouring the borders of the Spiral Tarot black with a Sharpie and a Pentel (and losing the titles in the process) - it's so much better now. I did a test card first and would have trimmed the deck if that hadn't worked. Those borders really bothered me and made the deck almost unusable, although I love the majors (the minors less so).

An old tutor at art school once told me that if something about a piece of work bothers you, you can't spoil it by trying to make it better, as you'll never be happy with it as it is. You can apply this philosophy to all sorts of things...:)

Mind you, I wouldn't interfere with a very expensive deck unless I intended to use it for ever to the exclusion of all/most others.

Pen
 

Laura Borealis

I have never trimmed a deck, but I wouldn't rule it out. And I really enjoy looking at pictures of other people's. The images really do seem freed once the borders are gone (depending on the deck of course).


Oddity said:
What makes me a little sad is the thought of people artificially aging and "mutilating" (yes) a deck and then decide it's not for them after all... such unnecessary waste of a perfectly good deck that somebody else might have liked in its original un-trimmed shape. :(
That reminds me, I need to finish aging my RWS... that project got put to the side when I got frustrated with it, but it would be nice to wrap it up before the new year starts tomorrow! I only have a few cards left, too.
 

kfk

umbrae?

Pardon a newbie question.What is umbraing a deck?.I may want to try this.