Fantastic Menagerie Tarot - a few cards online

Alta

baba-prague said:
The cards are about as large as they can be while still being shuffle-able. Of course, no one size can suit everyone, but we think this is a good size and shape for the majority of people. It's 78cm by 120cm. That's 3.1 inches by 5 inches.
I think that would be 7.8cm by 12.0cm, right? :D
 

baba-prague

ROTFL - er yes, otherwise they would indeed be LARGE cards. Sorry, I meant to say mm not cm - I'll go back and edit the post. Thanks!
 

jackdaw*

Ooh, lovely cards, Karen! I had firmly told myself I would NOT buy this deck, I would be good ... and then I caved. That sad Five of Coins did it for me. And your Star! Just lovely. And then I got your slide show to work, and the Queen of Cups! The elegant, langorous swan that can be slightly melancholy and mates for life - spectacular choice.

Will be watching this space and ready to order direct from you as soon as you have it available! Yet another fantastic job!
 

MeeWah

baba-prague: Always interested in how the 5 cards are expressed in any deck & particularly, 5 of Coins/Pentacles. That 5 of Coins very evocative & haunting.

Shall never look at an egg in the same way again.
 

baba-prague

Ah yes, the Queen of Cups is a lovely card (down to Alex, this one, although I chose the Swan some time ago). I like the mix of romance - the swan - and humour - the little (is he an auk?) fishing in the background. He is so earnest and she is SO languid.

MeeWah, it's funny you should say this. I was in the supermarket yesterday and found myself making excuses about why I didn't need to buy eggs - ridiculous really! But this image does sort of stay with you, I hope it isn't too harsh, but like much of Grandville it does have a dark humour also.

Here is a straightforwardly happy card - the Four of Wands. We completed it last night (oh, can't get the attachment to work, how odd. I'll try again in a minute).
 

baba-prague

Here is the Six of Wands first (oh, meant to say, the colouring isn't quite finished - but the card is 90% final). As attachments are taking forever today for some reason the Four is following as a link.
 

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WolfSpirit

Haha, I love those pictures where the insects are out of their natural proportion and interact with the other animals.
(in fact it reminded me of an old book I used to look at when I was a kid, I started a thread about it in Chat for those interested)

Rosanne said:
Are you going to get some these wonderful cards? It takes a lot for me to love themed decks and rave!

I sometimes buy a themed deck but I find I don't use them that often. I do like to work with animal cards (tarot or oracle) but these are different from naturalistic animals...but I do really like the atmosphere of the cards.
I expect it will be a very personal deck for me.
 

weaver

Once again, I am simply astonished, Karen! I don't know how you and Alex do it. Your work is simply astonishing. How do you manage to seemingly keep so many "plates" spinning at the same time and still produce such quality work?!

I pre-ordered this deck quite a while ago, not really knowing what the deck would be like, simply because it was produced by Magic Realist Press. Having now seen some of the card's images, I can say with certainty that I am really excited about the deck itself. Great stuff! Many thanks for producing such wonderful Tarot decks. They are each uniquely extraordinary!

weaver
 

baba-prague

weaver said:
Once again, I am simply astonished, Karen! I don't know how you and Alex do it. Your work is simply astonishing. How do you manage to seemingly keep so many "plates" spinning at the same time and still produce such quality work?!

Thanks! But you know, we got quite behind in the autumn, for a number of reasons (personal and work-related). We are working hard to catch up. I suppose we do "plate spin", maybe me more so than Alex. When I was running my agency in London we usually had between a dozen and two dozen projects on at any one time and I suppose I got used to that. Mind-you, I wouldn't like to have so many going on now. But half a dozen or so seems to suit us - one sort of stimulates the other sometimes, and it means that you tend temporarily to move off any particular project that isn't "sparking" at any point - and that's a good thing. I also find the more tactile projects - textiles (and maybe some other media soon) feed into the tarot - it's nice not to work on-screen all the time but to have touchable things also.

Anyway, I have got the two pages of Majors up:

http://www.fantasticmenagerie.com/Majors1.htm
http://www.fantasticmenagerie.com/Majors2.htm

Hopefully I may get other pages - I'm aiming for Wands - in the next day or two. There's nothing like seeing all the cards on one page, I think when I get time I may go back and do this kind of layout for the Fairytale too.