Trimmed Borders/Altered Decks Index

Carla said:

GO for it on the Druidcraft. It makes a world of difference, you'll never regret doing it. I trimmed my back to the stone borders at first, used them like that for about a year, then went ahead and whacked them completely borderless. Lovely that way. I did leave the titles at the bottom because I like the font, but some have cut those off as well.

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I'm in the process of trimming mine to just the image, and I love the way they look. But now they don't match my Druid Plants and Animals that are trimmed to the borders, and I'd like to have a matching DC. So, I'll have to pick up a back up deck to trim.

Marina said:

Touchstone, also by Kat Black - the big and stiff cards are incredibly hard to shuffle, in my opinion. And I think it'd look just as good as the Golden trimmed.

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One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is sometimes trimming to a smaller size does make for a much stiffer deck. Based on my experiences if it is stiff to shuffle to begin with it will be moreso after trimming.

I'm just getting a cuppa and then will update this this thread index.
Thank you everyone who posts images or opinions!

AJ said:

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is sometimes trimming to a smaller size does make for a much stiffer deck. Based on my experiences if it is stiff to shuffle to begin with it will be moreso after trimming.

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I think you could be right. I remember someone (I think it was Scion, at the RS10) said that the the Enchanted was not very good to trim because of the stiff factor. It has a rather stiff card stock, and after your trim it it kind resembles a little brick. However, I trimmed mine and found that I prefer it small and stiff than big and... stiff. LOL!

However, it's obvious that the Touchstone has a far stiffer cardstock, so yes, I think trimming it could turn it into a potential weapon...

Size isn't everything
I prefered my Enchanted trimmed also, still haven't decided about rounding the corners on that one.

All images shared to this point have been added to the index. Thank you
everyone!

Am wondering if the thread mod would be agreeable to moving this index up to the first post in the sticky thread? Those indexes on that post are Way out of date.

Marina said:

Kalliope, I *loved* your trimmed Golden. If I wasn't such a motor coordination-challenged individual, I'd definitely follow your footsteps. In fact, I'd consider trimming my Touchstone, also by Kat Black - the big and stiff cards are incredibly hard to shuffle, in my opinion. And I think it'd look just as good as the Golden trimmed.

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Marina, glad you like it! The Touchstone looks really beautiful, and I'm sure you're right that it would look great trimmed. You should get yourself a guillotine paper cutter (with a guide) for trimming. That's what I use, and it requires very little coordination and quite consistent results, which is why I like it. I've trimmed decks while watching television, ha! I gave details of my easy method and links to the tools I use in this post here, just to enable you a little.

AJ said:

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is sometimes trimming to a smaller size does make for a much stiffer deck. Based on my experiences if it is stiff to shuffle to begin with it will be moreso after trimming.

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Yep, I'd agree with this. I tend to do the overhand shuffle for most tarot decks, though, so this doesn't matter much to me. But if one is a riffle shuffler, this would be something to consider before trimming, for sure.

LS Rider Waite Smith

I was organizing one of my tarot drawers a while ago and I found a Lo Scarabeo Centenary Special edition of the Rider Waite Smith. Despite the deck has good colors and good card stock, I don't really use it.

I have to confess that I find those brown-ish LoS border quite ugly, even though I understand they are useful for non-english speakers. Since I can speak English, lol!, I thought I could get rid of them...

What do you guys think?

Also, when you "bling" your deck with nail polish and glitter, how to you make sure they don't rub off as you use the deck? Or do you shuffle super carefully?

Thanks!

Marina said:

I was organizing one of my tarot drawers a while ago and I found a Lo Scarabeo Centenary Special edition of the Rider Waite Smith. Despite the deck has good colors and good card stock, I don't really use it.

I have to confess that I find those brown-ish LoS border quite ugly, even though I understand they are useful for non-english speakers. Since I can speak English, lol!, I thought I could get rid of them...

What do you guys think?

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Interesting idea. So you would trim off the upper borders (and sides), but keep the bottom titles? I could see that looking pretty good! The colors are attractive on that deck -- it reminds me of the PCS Commemorative which I really love.

The only downside would be losing the numbers. If you missed them, you could always take a fine-tipped marker and write in the roman numerals or numbers right at the top of the images. I say go for it! Especially if you're not using the deck anyway. It can really only be an improvement, right?

Have you checked that all the cards are the same size? There's nothing worse than starting...

kalliope said:

Interesting idea. So you would trim off the upper borders (and sides), but keep the bottom titles? I could see that looking pretty good! The colors are attractive on that deck -- it reminds me of the PCS Commemorative which I really love.

The only downside would be losing the numbers. If you missed them, you could always take a fine-tipped marker and write in the roman numerals or numbers right at the top of the images. I say go for it! Especially if you're not using the deck anyway. It can really only be an improvement, right?

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Yes, I think the colors are meant to look a bit vintagey. This is a very nice deck, but I think it would be better without the borders.

I actually thought about getting rid of the name of the cards too, since all the pictures (as I explained to Le Fanu below) have the same size. I do not need the numbers not the names to known which card is which. In fact, I think that the lack of words would help me to focus more on the images... but that's just a thought...

Le Fanu said:

Have you checked that all the cards are the same size? There's nothing worse than starting...

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Yes they are. All the picture have the same size - it seem LoS changed the size of the pictures in order to insert their typical top borders. For instance, the number of the minor, which are usually at the top, are not visible in this deck.

If you line up majors, courts and minors, the pictures have the same size exactly. So I think it can be trimmed

Marina said:

Also, when you "bling" your deck with nail polish and glitter, how to you make sure they don't rub off as you use the deck? Or do you shuffle super carefully?

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I used spray varnish. Did the whole deck at once in the garage and the smell of the varnish got into the house (through the closed garage door!) and the deck smelled of varnish for a few months. But the smell is barely noticeable now. I detailed it in the Pimp My Rider thread.