Trimming and Edging cards

JMI_Tarot

Here's a card from a pink, cropped to show the improvement. (I also rounded the corners, but can't be bothered to get one out to scan...)

I think you must agree that I have in no way "mutilated" it :D

It looks beautiful.
 

page of ghosts

Trimming is not for everyone, but I really like it. A lot of my decks are trimmed because I enjoy doing it to bond and I feel like white borders - as the majority of my trimmed decks have - can wash out the colours in the images. And if it's a dark deck with a lot of black I feel like it just clashes with the white. My only oracle deck didn't have bad borders that bothered me much in themselves, but the images were really off centre on a lot of cards and that annoyed me so much I ended up trimming it anyway. It's a little risky and I have some uneven cards in my decks but it's worth it to me :D
 

Carojulie

This is all so interesting.

I have a deck with black edges that I use A LOT and for a long time and it has held up really well but the sides have turned a bit white.

With the aid of all your great advice and expertise, I just had a go at edging some with a black permanent marker and they look like new. It's amazing.

I did just a few, one by one, placing it on a sheet of paper and drawing sort of an outline around each one.

This is really fun and I get what you mean about it kind of connecting you to the deck. I look forward to finishing them all tonight!

So cool.
Thanks again everybody.

I am glad you like it !
You are so right about doing one card at a time. I have heard scary stories of ink running all over the place when people try to stack several cards in order to gain time. So better be safe than sorry ! Plus, I like the unhurried pace of doing one card at a time, it is relaxing.
I found several useful videos on youtube with instructions on how to do it (including some videos showing the bad result of bad techniques : what to avoid !) ; you can search Youtube with keywords like tarot trimming / cutting borders /borderectomy / edging / ink treatment / etc.....
 

CharlotteK

I've trimmed and edged two decks as an experiment. Both have ended up pretty small and the end result probably could be described as mutilation, but they were both fairly beaten up in any case - a Radiant Rider Waite with white borders I didn't like and bent corners. And a mass market Anna K with black borders that were all chipped and tatty. I learned a lot, like how ink can bleed if the corners have rough bits from rounding! Both go with me now as travel decks. The Anna K deck has a surprising amount of action going on at outer edges of the deck, so the imagery has been comprised a bit and several of the minors are missing swords and wands, but I have the self-published version at home that I prefer to read with anyway and that I'd never touch.

I'm currently in the process of trimming my Crystal Visions as I think that looks nicer borderless too. The results are a lot better as I'm being more careful with the Fiskars and have chosen a much better edging colour so minor bleeds are invisible. So far so good.

I've also edged another two decks with black due to chipped black borders. My 3rd edition Tarot of Trees looked horrible brand new, something very nasty going on with the cardstock and lamination, so black edges have disguised a lot of that and improved it no end. I also black edged my Tarot Decoratif, which was nerveracking as is one of the most expensive decks I've bought, but Le Mat had a chip in it and I tried a small cover up job with a marker and one thing led to another. It looks awesome.
 

JMI_Tarot

I also black edged my Tarot Decoratif, which was nerveracking as is one of the most expensive decks I've bought, but Le Mat had a chip in it and I tried a small cover up job with a marker and one thing led to another. It looks awesome.

These stories are all like little journeys.
 

Nemia

Even Mark McElroy himself liked the look of it :)
 

Carojulie

Even Mark McElroy himself liked the look of it :)
YES !!!

Sometimes showing off trimmed decks give ideas to the artists / or to the publishing companies.

Someone mentioned that, for example, the latest edition of the Deviant Moon is borderless ; that might be because so many beautiful trimmed decks are showing up on Google, Youtube and Pininterest !

Also, it seems that the italian company with a beetle name who was famous for inscribing names of trumps and suits in 100 different languages on its cards, probably in the hope of reaching an international audience..... is nowadays releasing more and more decks with nice classy borders instead of these unhappy multilingual margins. Could that be an after effect of all the trimmed decks showing off everywhere ?