The Making of the Cards
The Intuition Oracle Deck was birthed when I found myself in the spiritual side of the world, learning about following my intuition and healing myself. I found myself drawn to tarot and oracle decks quickly. As an intuition project suggested by my little sister, I started creating a deck for myself.
I was at the beginning of my spiritual journey and we had taken a drive to go read cards at a place called Eureka Springs in Arkansas (a lovely spot, I highly recommend visiting). The wind was blowing pretty steady though so we ended up sitting in my little car doing readings for each other and talking. I had wanted to start the deck while we were there, I had a pencil and index cards already and just didn't know where to start. I ended up sending out a mass text to all of my friends and close family asking for them to send me the first word that popped into their head. My little sister gave me the word for the first card, "Apple". So, it began. I didn’t get many words that day but it was a great beginning to this journey.
Over the course of the next two years I worked on building a deck that spoke to me in a special way. Each card started as a simple word, sometimes they were words that I think up myself and other times it is something someone said or one that was just coming up over and over and over in a short period of time. When I get a word I sit with it before getting my pencils out.
I always loved drinking either a cup of coffee or hot chocolate while I ponder. Usually I light a candle and occasionally have some incents burning.
I used everything from a regular #2 pencil, to an actual pencil set for drawing. On a couple of the cards I used a charcoal pencil set I was given. I even used a pencil that I have no idea what it was but it looked like a stick so it was fun. To blend I used either a q-tip or a makeup brush, and as for paper I used everything from index cards to a variety of different drawing books.
Sometimes I found that when I thought of the word it was legit seen as that thing. Like the "Moon" but other times like with things like "Life" and "Wisdom" how do you picture those? Some of the cards symbolize things I am very familiar with in my life, like again the "Moon" I spend a lot of time outside at night and even have an app on my phone dedicated to it. Other cards are less common and not on my mind as often and needed more time to think about, like "Iceberg" (and yes there is a typo on this card in the sample deck that has already been changed for the actual decks) that I don't think I have ever -really- thought about on more than a surface level even though they come up more than one would think that they would in my everyday life.
After sitting with the word (some words I sat with for weeks) and deciding what it meant to me, sometimes I would draw it immediately and other times I would write it down and move to another word. There were times when all I would do for a week was draw and I would get 3 or 4 cards drawn.
After the first 15 cards I ended up doing most of the work in the various art books I had over the years. I found that it was easier to keep the art safe. Though towards the end I was going through a lot of heavy life stuff and found that I needed emotionally to go back to my roots of the project and picked back up the index cards.
The process took 2 years to complete because well, life and sometimes it took more than an hour sitting with a word. So, two years, four different sketch books, 3 different boxes and a handful of single pencils, lets not forget the index cards and a whole lot of self exploration later and here we are!
Gathering all the art and scanning it into my computer took longer than I would have expected but I was really pleased with how everything fit onto the example cards (save a few that I am editing how they fit simply for esthetics).
I really toyed with if I should print this deck in color and let it show the different papers and the different pencils I used over the two years or if I should print it in black and white for a more cohesive deck. When it all came down to it I printed both options and asked for others opinions. All but one person said they connected with the deck better in color and they in fact loved the added character.
The more I shared the deck with other readers the more I learned how different each of our stories are and how this deck almost speaks a different language to each person. This is why I want the book to not focus solely on what my intuition said or what research says but I want the biggest part of the book set aside so you can record what each image says to you based on your story.
All in all the whole time was so rewarding and peaceful. I learned so much about myself and my own world. I am so excited to see how this deck will speak to you and impact your life.