Where do you store your tarot cards?

MysticalMoose said:

ooooooh! sounds fab!....any pics ???????

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Im not a paid up member so I can´t post and have to remain faceless, anonymous and pic-less...

Many of my decks, and all my favourites, have tie-dyed watered-silk squares that they are wrapped in. A few have velvet bags, some of which you can see daylight through now. One, my Haindl, has a purpose-made leather wallet, nd one other is held together with an elastic band but otherwise is a nudist. Only a minority are in their original packaging, and of those, only two have LWBs with them any longer.

These are not "where they live", these are the clothes they wear. One lives with me at all times (well, except when I'm under the shower, obviously). Five or six, which rotate every few months, live in my Tarot Bag, that I take with me when I go to do public readings. The rest have a communal household in an outsize wicker basket that takes up most of my kitchen table and needs a towel to cover them. I swear they move around in that basket - decks I knew to be in the surface will find their way deeper, and decks that haven't seen the light of day for a while will suddenly be on top. they seem to be quite happy to live as a community.

I keep my deck in a black cloth bag I got free from somewhere. Nothing fancy but works for me. I kept the deck in the original cardboard box with extra cards and lwb but didn't find it practical. Extra cards tried always to slip in the deck when I took it from the box.

I have a large, shallow box that used to hold a set of water colour pensils. When I open it, my decks are set out side by side, separated (for the moment) with folded paper boxes that make little cubbies for each of them. I am currently embroidering some heavy-weave undyed cotton to make fabric boxes for them all, but for now they are quite happy as they are.

I also have a few crocheted bags for when I want to carry just one deck around with me, and I have a deep-set box I made at a craft showcase at home-depot and later painted with a four-point triquetra for protection, and this can hold up to two decks (usually The Faeries' Oracle and Legend: the Arthurian Tarot) for when I go on weekend trips and such.

I like the idea of storing my cards in something that I personally made, so that they are surrounded by my creative energies all the time, which I believe further attunes them to my personality and all that, and since my collection is still relatively small compared to most people around here, I can afford the time it takes to do that, though I figure as long as the storage box has meaning to you and fits with the deck, it's all good .

Great ideas!

This thread has given me some great ideas, thank you! It made me remember an old jewelry box that I no longer use...it has a removable lid, shoebox style, but a little wider, and deeper, than that, and had removable trays. I transfered my jewelry from that, to a newer wooden one that I received a few years ago....but hung on to the old heavy cardboard type box for... well, never knew if I'd need it for *something*.

Are there any suggestions for how to do this...covering and securing the fabric coverings, etc.? I thought sometime of brocaded or watered silk (or whatever catches my eye when I go shopping), and maybe a satiny silk on the inside. I originally thought about velvet, but the velvety bags would hang on a velvety lining...kinda like an old felt board! I think I'd rather them slide and have a smooth bed.

Thinking......getting kind of excited!

My cards have many homes, lol. I put the decks in their own bag and keep them, their origional boxes and my journals together...but I don't have a specific container. Right now they're laying stacked together on a table in our bedroom. Sometimes they're in a box in an easily accessable part of our closet, or beside our bed, or on top of my piano. I read anywhere and everywhere, so they don't have 1 home...except with me, lol. I always know where they are, though.



~SharonS

Most of my decks are in little flannel drawstring bags. They are then kept in a drawer. Others, that I don't use are kept in their boxes with their book, etc.

LavenderLibra said:

Are there any suggestions for how to do this...covering and securing the fabric coverings, etc.? I thought sometime of brocaded or watered silk (or whatever catches my eye when I go shopping), and maybe a satiny silk on the inside. I originally thought about velvet, but the velvety bags would hang on a velvety lining...kinda like an old felt board! I think I'd rather them slide and have a smooth bed.

Thinking......getting kind of excited!

Click to expand...

Well, with the fabric boxes I am making for mine, I intend to secure them with braided floss (like that you use for friendship bracelets or embroidery) in colours that match the decks.

If your box is the sort I think it is, you could even use something as simple as a wide, rectangular piece of fabric and just wrap the cards in that. It should be long enough and wide enough that you can put your cards down in the middle and each edge of the fabric should reach to the oposit edge of the cards, completely hiding the deck from view. You can fold all four sides over the deck and store it in your box with the flap-side down, which should keep it secure.

Alternatively, you can use a smaller peice of fabric, so that the edges only reach halfway across the cards when they are in the middle, then you can attach bits of floss, string, thin rope, or whatever, to the middle of each edge, and when you fold all the sides in, you can tie the threads together, though you might have a problem with the corners of the fabric bulking up and flaring out like flower petals.

... if any of that made any sense at all, lol, I'm not the best technical-describer. as you can see!

Thanks for the feedback...I am "mentally" picturing the process in my head, and firming up how I will do it...I don't know if I will do it or not, but even though up having a "false bottom" inside the case...something like one of the trays, but covered in the same fabric, but at each end, little ribbon loops that I could pull it up by...under that, I could store the LWBs, and things like that.

I'm not sure if I want the same material on the bottom of the box as on sides and top...maybe something else, because I can see it getting scuffed and yucky, scooting around on table tops, etc.

I think I will take before and after pictures.

I guess I am kind of excited about coming up with this, because I have been ignoring my creative side, crafts, things like that, for several years. I did not realize this until a friend/mentor pointed this out to me recently, reminding me of all the interests I used to have, and now don't.

Had to post here as Im feeling smug...

I had my tarot cards stored in bags and boxes on various shelves, some stuffed at the back of the bookshelf, others out of reach, others in the bedroom, all piled on top of each other. The favourites were within easy reach, but the ones I use less often were all over the place.

Anyway, I decided to GET ORGANISED and went to Ikea yesterday and bought a couple of shelving units with shallow, movable shelves (the sort for storing CDS or DVDs. Nothing ostentatious, but neutral and discreet, and spent today (as Im not working) putting them together and bringing all my decks together into one place.

I do believe it has changed my life! All of them are now within easy reach and all together. Even the Llewellyn/MRP/Druid Craft etc boxes and the accompanying books are all on the same shelving unit. Im thrilled that I can now think of any deck I have and get at it within seconds. O the difference it has made to my life! Ive just been sitting on the floor all afternoon looking at it in admiration.

Ive organised it by "Historic Decks", "1970s/80s" decks, Thoth, RWS and clones, Oracles and Sibillas, I-Ching, etc etc. Thrilled!

Problem is, it was quite a shock to realise just how many decks I actually have. They won´t all fit if I store them like books, they have to be shelved "depth-ways", i.e only the top flap of the tuckbox visible for identification.