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Notes from the Coughing Zone

I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, though I might propel myself into space with my coughing. What I thought was a lingering flu turned out to be a rather aggressive lung and inner ear infection. By the time I found this out it had also spread through my lymph nodes and offered some fabulous swelling. So I’ve been on bed rest and a mountain of medication for the past few weeks. Just another lovely perk of having a weakened immune system. I still feel rather blah, but at least my bone rattling cough has gotten much better.

In happier news, my mini decks and tea tins arrived this week so I am officially fully stocked to cover my Lydia campaign perks and my cyber Monday sales. I will be able to begin shipping smaller perks hopefully as soon as next week. I hope to be back to my regular posting then too. Now I’m going to go start tucking minis into their boxes before my body tells me its time to take a break again. 🙂

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Recommended Shopping

I spend way too much of my time on instagram, I cannot lie. During my idle time there I have found some wonderful shops that I think would appeal to those who follow me there and my blog here. So here are a few links for this biggest shopping weekend of the year and I will be adding to it as more shops tip toe across my screen.

Tarot n Tea is just what is sounds like – lots of tarot and some lovely tea to sip as you read. Babbo offers a variety of different gift boxes that come themed for the season and full of lots of lovely things. I’m also a deck contributor so you will see some of my cards in those boxes and in readings. 🙂 Get your box here.

The Bee and the Snake offers neat handmade things, especially drawstring tarot bags! Betsy has an etsy shop of goodness found here.

Spookys Geek Boutique is a fun place for a lil spooky and a lil sweet. They have their own holiday weekend sale going on at their site here.

The 8th House Tarot is in the process of making a tarot deck of the same name. The artwork is simple and straight to the point. Annabel has started a pantheon page to help aid the process of see her deck realized.

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Lil Witch Thalia and the Lydia Tarot

Lil Thalia says “please visit AtticCartomancy.com this weekend for the last deckapalooza this year!” 😊🖤 Starting midnight after Thanksgiving, for four days all my decks will be available, I’ll even have a few special editions. There will also be a shopping page up for other wonderful deck shops.

Now to set my shop-keep hat to the side, I found some clearance Bratz dolls years ago. The first one I attempted to work over was a miserable disaster. I made another attempt and modeled her after my Lydia mask. It went way better this time. I named her after @theacidpoptart ‘s (seen in the last photo playing the part of my witchy Lydia deck maker) daughter, who is a modeling mini-me of her mom. And crazy adorable. I’m not sure I will ever outgrow playing doll dress-up. Deck featured is the mini Madam Lydia Wilhelmina’s Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes. 😉🖤

Attic Cartomancy - Lydia Mini Tarot

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Lydia Perk Update

Hello! I hope you are all having a wonderful Saturday evening.

I spent the day labeling deck tins and mini deck boxes. I also began packaging the mini decks. It’s going pretty smoothly -knock on wood- 😉 Reference books arrive on Monday. It was supposed to be today but UPS just let me know there’s a delay due to a minor address snafu. You know, one of those hiccups.

Still working away on the grimoire and getting closer to done.

That’s about all for now. Just wanted to let everyone know where things were at. Stay warm and have a lovely night! ~ Bethalynne

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Happy Halloween!

Attic Cartomancy - Fan Art - Fan Tarot - American Horror Story

And this year Halloween falls on AHS night.
Tonight’s fan card offering is the VooDoo Queen.

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This Week’s Fan Tarot Offering

What better way to enjoy a show when you’re a hyper obsessive card maker? Two more cards came to life as I was watching American Horror Story this week. 🙂

Attic Cartomancy - Fan Tarot - American Horror Story Attic Cartomancy - Fan Tarot - American Horror Story
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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Five of Coins

Attic Cartmancy - Card of the Day - Five of Coins

This is one of those mornings where I pulled a card and immediately had the impulse to whistle nervously and tuck it back into the deck like I never pulled it out. At least I can say I pulled it in reverse. However, the last few days I’ve been having give me cause to read too deeply into it.

I drew the five of coins this morning. I think I whispered to my deck you better stop f’ing with me. This is a card I only briefly studied when I was doing the minors for the Isidore Tarot. I was still a novice back then. After working on the Lydia deck I think I’m finally at a point where I feel comfortable with what I’m looking at when I do a reading for myself. I also wanted to tie in the symbols of the cards with the way I created the collages. I wanted whatever dark scene you’re looking at to not only keep the theme of the deck and portray that card’s symbolism, I wanted there to be other things I could link to it for the pages in the deck’s grimoire. That means I’ve been getting really into these silly cards and I just didn’t want to pick this one upon waking.

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The Isidore Tarot Autumn Packaging

I’ve been offering the autumn edition of the deck for the past few years. It’s packaging and card back feature the original This King and Queen of the Pumpkin Ball collage artwork that the Empress and Chariot card artwork is based on. This year the deck will feature the third edition full bleed card artwork and it will also be the last year we offer this packaging. There are ten decks available this autumn and they only come in full packaging. Touch image below to read more or order.

The Isidore Tarot Autumn Packaging

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Reviews of the Lydia Tarot

I sent out a bundle of review decks for the lovely folks at Indie Deck Review a few weeks back and the reviews have started to roll in. 🙂 You can find a few of those reviews on their Instagram account, linked to below.

Indie Deck Review on Instagram

Indie Deck Review on Instagram

Or you can pop by their website for a lengthier review (linked below) as well as a whole assortment of wonderful indie decks that might not be on your radar as of yet. So many thanks to them for all the support!!

Indie Deck Review

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The Lydia Tarot Grimoire – The Star

The Lydia Tarot - The Star
I’m pleased to announce I hit my first stretch goal for the Lydia tarot’s IndieGoGo campaign. This means grimoires for everyone that has purchased a deck! Here’s another peek at the grimoire. 🙂

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Card of the Day: The Lydia Tarot’s Four of Swords

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - Four of Swords

So I will say at the beginning – it was only when creating the artwork for this deck that I fully appreciated the meaning of this card in the deck. The process of studying it to better understand it before I worked on my collage made me somewhat exhausted. It reminded me greatly of what this year has felt like: A year of battling back to full steam, only to continue staggering here and there when lingering remnants of my accident (now a year old) came back to call. I still get vertigo at the top of stairs. I still feel panicked at times when out in crowds. This past weekend I suffered dizzy spells from lingering head trauma, which led me to having a nasty fall one night. It brings things back into a clear picture. The healing is still going on and the fear of something worse being out there still bothers me. So I have to keep that in mind always.

The four of swords comes after the trauma of the three of swords. In this deck I represented that card with a still human heart being pierced by the scalpels of Dr. Frankenstein, looking for ways to get back in and kick-start it in a new body. It would be a shock to the system for whoever finds themselves at the end of this Dr’s quest. On the other side of that is someone who has been through something and maybe needs to pull back – either to catch their breath or to flat out retreat from further harm. I thought a lot about that as I was creating this card. I have been trying to rush rush rush and rush some more to get back to whole. In that rushing, I have had moments where I have over taxed myself and worn down as a result. It’s been a year right? It feels like I’ve spent too much time on my back resting, healing. Then I hit that moment where I realize we don’t always heal on the schedule we feel is appropriate.

In this deck, as the cards are all dark, I still didn’t portray a crypt scene. I have my heroine laying on a comfortable last bed. She is wrapped up and treated from the many things she’s suffered through. She looks content, relaxed, a little worse for wear and understanding where she is going, but she has found her resting place and she is content with it. I gave her a bright stained glass window off to the side to keep her in the light. Even as a lover of the darkness, a little light is terribly comforting.

Remember – you can back this deck here. 🙂

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American Horror Story Tarot?

Being the huge American Horror Story fangirl that I am, as well as being the compulsive card designer, I’ve been making fan related cards while I watch the show. I like some seasons better than others, and I really LOVE this season so far. And the witches are back! And Stevie Nicks is coming back! Eeeehhh! Alright, a couple samples. 🙂 And this is just a fan-art thing. I’m not actually doing a tarot for the show, but man that would be great! Now, ten minutes and counting to showtime and what the witches are up to!

Attic Cartomancy - American Horror Story - Fan Tarot

Attic Cartomancy - American Horror Story - Fan Tarot

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It’s October!!

Finally! I spent the last day of September with my friend Anastasia a.k.a. Acid Poptart, a wonderful writer and model. Between her costume and my mask we were able to bring Madam Lydia Wilhelmina to life. Below is a sample. There are a few more samples in my IGG updates. Speaking of which, 183% funded! I’m moving towards my first stretch goal so I can bump up everyone’s perks. Thank you so much to everyone who has backed it so far. 🙂 Speaking of which, I have review decks I need to package up and send off into the world. More to come!

Madam Lydia Wilhelmina

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Card of the Day: The Lydia Queen of Coins

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - Queen of Coins

I adore this card, for both its meaning and the collage process to create it. I have a heavy dose of French-Italian painter Frédéric Soulacroix’s work in my coins suit. There is a sleek elegance to his style and his paintings almost always feature a lavish and comfortable scene. These worked very well as a foundation for many of the coin cards. The thing I wanted to make more drastic in each collage were the faces. I wanted less cheerful faces to peer from behind the many masks used in the suit. Many of the cards aren’t dark, so I wanted the masquerade aspect of Halloween to play heavily in them.

My queen is a strong woman. She’s the master of her domain. The mother to those around her who keeps a good home for them. The ruler over her working domain and practical keeper of her coins. And she does all of this with a simple grace and a level head. As the keeper of my home and my own business I identify with her quite well. There is a sometimes an intense balance that must be maintained to keep home and business both equally successful. It is far too easy to let time with a business take away from time that should be spent in the home and with family. Learning that type of balance doesn’t always happen over night. It took me two decades, but my reward was having a better home, my own independence in my business, and just enough extra to be generous with others where I can.

In my card my queen relaxes with a book in the very comfortable world she has worked hard to create. She is surrounded by nature and those things she feels are her creature comforts. She is keeping an eye on her coin. In the theme of the Lydia deck she is a part of the last masquerade of summer that comes on the night of the autumn solstice. Her masked affair begins in those last green moments of summer and ends in the first changing colors of the start of autumn. She’s one of the prettiest cards in the deck.

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Another Grimoire Page for Lydia

Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes -Grimoire

So! As I’ve stated earlier, I gave my Lydia Tarot a soft launch a week back. I wanted to post the sale Sept 13th, a date very important to me because of my mother, and to give the campaign as much of an autumn timeline leading up to Halloween as I could. In doing this I decided to go a bit light on the whole promoting thing; mostly because at that time I was only starting to get my prototypes for the deck and packaging. To my surprise the deck funded within two days. I backed for a smaller amount to start, but to put it in perspective? I campaigned for my Isidore Tarot’s Second Edition, one of my more popular decks, and I think I asked for a grand and got that after half a month of hard promoting. Then to get my stretch goal I had to get obnoxious. So I’m happy this one picked up a bit quicker and surprised honestly.

The deck I finished just barely before I launched the campaign. Now I’m working on the full color companion book that I wanted to be akin to a grimoire. There is so much more in there than just card explanations. I’m also working on my stretch goal rewards and some of the big (who will actually grab this?!) perks. That all aside, I really just want to take a moment to talk about the grimoire.

I love this book! I’m not only creating a digital version of the book, I’m creating the actual book of shadows. My hubby, long ago, crafted this incredible wooden book form that can house an actual book. So I’m printing off my grimoire pages as I finish them, on really nice, aged paper and adding them to it. Tea staining, more pressed/dried flowers, personal items. I have my sketches and my mementos going into it. It’s just for me, this living copy, and it’s affecting how I design the tarot’s book pages too. It’s a nice way to be starting autumn out.

I carry a small grudge against being denied my autumn last year. Then I sat down with my gent and looked over all the stuff we did last year even with my mangled body, which included flying to Boston and getting a chance to visit with my dad and see Mrs. Obama speak, and realized we haven’t actually slowed down much at all for awhile now. Finishing up this deck is like a cherry on top of that Sundae.

Anyhoo! Cuz I love the bad word anyhoo. This is a sample from the grimoire that I’m working on. I will try to keep up with my normal entries for the site (now that traffic as gone wonderfully up) and not be completely and obnoxiously promoting my deck. But you will be seeing a lot more samples from this current project now that I’ve left soft launch phase. 🙂