We’re getting down to that last week of the Tea Bats Lenormand sale. These are samples of the Man and Woman cards. They lay atop the very snazzy etchings of my gent’s that adorn our living room walls. You can still nab one here. 😉
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Happy Valentine’s Day! To celebrate the day we’ve added our second sale for the Tea Bats Lenormand deck featuring the second edition. Each order will come with a collection of new Tea Bats mini prints. 🙂 This sale begins today and concludes March 24th. Estimated shipping begins mid-April. Order here!
The Tea Bats Lenormand second edition will begin it’s second sale this approaching Valentine’s Day. Sale will fun Feb 14th through to March 20th, with shipping the first of April. Check back again Tuesday. 🙂 More info to come.
This sale runs Nov 11th to Dec 5th.  |
This sale runs Nov 11th to Dec 5th.  |
This extended sale runs to Dec 5th.  |
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Halloween seems like a good time to debut the second edition of our Tea Bats Lenormand deck. You can see samples of the updated cards here. The cards are bigger, a little brighter, I’ve added some extra detailing as well as a small pop of color through tinting. Thankfully most of the cards were already done before my stair diving incident. Right now I’m working out packaging and potential sale times. 🙂
So I have a new project for my shoppe and that’s basically using a standard size card for all my decks. It makes the bulk ordering process just that much easier. I can buy packaging supplies for everything and not have to keep up on a variety of different sizes. With that said, I’ve been reworking the Tea Bats Lenormand card artwork to fit a larger card size. In the long run they’ll look a lot better. The current cards are super neat, but there is so much detailing to the collages on them that some of those details get lost.
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So I’m about to retire the first edition of the deck and look towards offering the second edition in the new year. The packaging will be slightly different, but I’ve kept all the very best pieces of what made the first edition lovely. The companion book will remain the same. Technically what I use now is the second edition of the book anyway and I love it. I have our last sale for the first edition at this link if you’d like to pick up an original deck.
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I have put a proper page up for my latest lenormand deck project – The Ink & Blood Lenormand. There you will find the rough drafts of the cards that are almost finished. They just need a little tweaking here and there, but for the most part they’re close to the final versions. More to come. 🙂
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I like to change up the decks that I do my card of the day draws from just as I like changing the style of deck. I’m still learning the Lenormand deck (yes, you can keep learning even after creating one and visually tackling the symbolism) and when I use it for a card of the day I’m reminded how these cards work better when in reference to other cards. However, doing these single card summaries are helping me learn them on a card by card basis. That said! Today’s card is from my Butterfly Circus deck and is the Tower.
In this card my performer is alone at the top of a tower and can suggest she is either isolated high above or that she’s on high guarding over those around her below. I guess it could also be both! In the past towers were a place of protection or where persons of authority locked themselves away in. There are a variety of interpretations when you go past the simple one word meanings. I think it comes down to the question being asked, what you’re trying to meditate on and what cards are drawn around it. This will have to be a to be continued kind of day card. I’ll tackle this card again.
I have three deck projects going on right now and I have to decide which one I want to settle on. I’m working on one with a game publisher where I’m adding a minor arcana on an existing major arcana – I have a defined timeline with that. There’s wiggle room. Then I have a Lenormand and Oracle projects to do on my own time. My own time translates to what I do at the end of the night when I’m just doing stuff for me.
A few nights ago I had a conversation with Myke about creative output as an artist. For me, who has no defined income, I have to apply myself at all times to create new and make sales on the old. I have no regulated income. I take in as much as I put in and sometimes I feel like I spend all my time just putting in. Not even on one thing. I juggle because I have to. Sometimes that removes a little bit of my joy when creating something 2new that I’m into. I have long since accepted this as a part of being a working artist.
I absolutely adore bats. From the scrunchy only a mother could love faced ones to the adorable flying foxes, I’m a fan of the bat. Given my Tea Bats Lenormand cards I’m sure my bat appreciation is apparent. So today is all about the bat. We shall get this bat love day started with a look at one of our beloved tea bats. A few years back I made Tea Bat trading cards for an Orange Moon Tea Society event. First up my most beloved Baroness Von Spiffy Lux.
I’ve said it before and I will most likely say it again, I really do enjoy the few moments spent making card of the day photographs. Today’s card is from my Tea Bats Lenormand.
I’ve already written a far longer entry for this card here that gets a bit more in-depth/personal. The ring represents a variety of things: relationships, repeating patterns, to coming full circle. I, like a lot of folks, tend to see a representation of cycles because of the circular nature of the ring. Like all of these cards there really is no strict rule as to how you read them, just suggestions to give you a place to start.
Today is a drive by carding, so to speak. I’m pleased to say this is because I’m up to my neck in commission work for an event in April. The Lenormand’s man card is pretty self explanatory though. Like the woman card, it typically refers to the man in your life; be that a lover, husband, father, brother, son, etc. If the person addressing the cards is a man, then this card represents him. Look to the cards around this one for answers.
My card here is from my Butterfly Circus Lenormand deck. My gent is, as you can imagine, dapper, but also a performer for my butterfly circus. He’s a bit of an M.C. and master butterfly wrangler. Alright, I have poster art needing my attention. Have a good day!
When you get the Lenormand’s snake card you can think of it in a variety of different ways. It’s not exactly a positive card, but neither should it be thought of as strictly a bad card. You will read that this card is associated with a woman, perhaps a dark haired woman and this may have something to do with the fact that it’s also associated with the Queen of Clubs. And with that a suggestion of a seduction or betrayal. It can represent maliciousness or deceit. When you find it in a spread look towards the cards around them and be wary.
In my Butterfly Circus Lenormand I kept my snake dapper. Because I wanted this to be a bright and more whimsical deck of cards, I kept all my characters a bit more light. This will sound silly but I always hear in my head Michigan J frog’s song only with lyrics for the cards at hand and a snake in a top hat belting it out. Sometimes you just have to keep things light hearted. 😉
So a five card spread for your Lenormand deck is really good for beginners or as a quickie for pros. Shuffle your deck and then think upon what you want to ask it as you cut the deck. Draw your first card and set it down. Draw your next card and lay it to the right of the first. Do this till you have five cards. The center card will be your focus card.
To begin, read the cards around your focus card. Gradually all the cards will create a picture for you. So my spread presented here is not random. It being Valentine’s Day I decided to do the make my gent peer over his book as I read this out loud spread. Ha! Or the Ohmahgawd look at that spread on V-Day! spread. So my focus is the Ring. This is an engagement, a commitment. To the immediate right is the Man card that I will say represents my gent. To the immediate left is the Heart card. Next to that is the Woman card, which we’ll say represents me. On the opposite side is the Moon. I was just saying this the other day about the tarot, but I love the moon card. In the Lenormand it represents romance, desire, intimacy, and dreams. It’s a good card.
So if I were to look at this spread and paint a picture for myself I see me and my gent and we are very much in love. Not only that, as cliche as it sounds, he’s been my best friend for a very long time. I see a commitment, which we have. We’ve been engaged for most of our relationship, though a legal marriage has not been something we’re rushing towards. That’s my focus card and I ask myself what I feel about our commitment. I’m quite happy with it and the surrounding cards (especially the Moon) remind me why I’m happy. He’s my moon in all ways, but especially in dreaming.
With the five card spread you can also go a step further and read the first and fifth card together and then the second and fourth. This is called mirroring. For this spread it just further sums up what I wrote above. So there is a little bit about reading the Lenormand and how to compare cards to one another and a stab at Valentine’s Day all in one! <3
Today is Valentine’s Day so of course the card of the day should be the Lenormand Heart. My little Ghosty girl helped me with card prep, which usually translates to let me sniff that a second… no really, put that over here mah nose needs to be on that! This time around it kind of looks like she’s giving the card a smooch, to which I said a few dawwwwww! and got back to work. 😉
There is no special meaning to the heart card, it’s pretty much what you think it’s about: Love. All kinds of love. Romantic, familial, yourself, and so on. In cartomancy is represents the Jack of Hearts. When you turn to the lenormand with questions about love the heart card is what you focus on and what other cards surround it. As you can imagine some card pairings are self explanatory. When the heart is near the ring card it suggests a partnership like marriage. To the other extreme having it near the whip card is more le rowr (eh hem, the sexy sex). The scythe a break-up. The dog might be a best friend and so on. Later on today I’m going to do an example quick five card layout with my Tea Bats lenormand and go a little deeper into that. 🙂
Today’s card of the day comes from my Butterfly Circus deck. The mountain card, visually one of my favorites from this deck, tends to represent an obstacle or a challenge. I can’t think of too many times in my life where there hasn’t been such a thing looming somewhere nearby. This reminds me to look around and see what is currently looming that needs to be dealt with.
When I was designing this card I had a lot going on in my life that was wearing me down. I very much felt the sensation of sitting at the base of something very tall and trying to find the energy to push myself up and over it. This is easier said than done. I was quite literal with my card woman laying at the base of a mountain of towers and staring up at the sky high above her. When looking at a challenge from the lowest point the task can feel incredibly daunting, even beyond reach. However, in the middle of the mountain of towers there is a doorway lit up offering the potential for either a rest in the climb or a doorway to bypass some of the obstacle. In other words, a spot of hope when things seem too hard. Sometimes we only need that one little thing to give us a kick in the bum and then onward up and over.
It might have become noticeable that most of my card of the day posts are written in regards to myself. I also like to change up decks so I’m learning more about each deck card by card. I have come to find that with the Lenormand doing a one card reading isn’t always practical as the meaning of the card has a lot to do with the surrounding cards. So instead I just use that card to learn a bit more about it and what question it might suggest I ask myself.
Today I drew the Lenormand deck’s Ring card and this one is from my Butterfly Circus deck. I used my conjoined twins in the artwork with the ring represented in their headdress. One of the meanings behind this card is being in a committed relationship. These gals don’t get much more committed than being joined at the hip. 😉 The card suggests you ask: If you’re in a relationship is the commitment between the two of you equal? If you’re single perhaps there is someone about to come into your life.
This card also can represent going in circles or repeating a cycle. Maybe you’re stuck at a place you don’t want to be in and you need to find a way to pull yourself out of the repetition of that place. So in pulling this card by itself I might ask myself: Is my creature of habit ways getting a bit too creature of habit? How do I feel about that?
There are a lot of literal meanings attributed to this card and many of them pertain to being committed to something; be it a person, an agreement, a business arrangement, and so on. Today I’ll be brushing up on those things. That is after this very creature of habit gets some of my daily cycle cycled. 😉
Today’s card comes from my Butterfly Circus Lenormand deck. The card that poked its nose out of the deck was the Flowers card, sometimes called the Bouquet card. This is a happy card. This is a card about letting go and just enjoying yourself without worry. So let that long sigh out, realize how tensed your shoulders have been and let them relax, and joyfully do your version of the Candyshack gopher dance. Well, you can do what you want. I’m just all about that gopher dance.
This is a good card for the day. We here in southern Ohio are experiencing another beautiful day with the temp in the mid 70s. The sun is once again shining brightly. All my windows are open and a nice breeze is giving my home what will mostly like be its last dose of fresh warm air before winter. Tomorrow we will get the cold and rainy version of the storm that is a blizzard elsewhere and we’ll be reminded it is indeed just about winter time. Not today though. And, as it happens, this card also represents receiving something unexpected. The other night my gent surprised me with YMCA memberships because he knew his mermaid-wanna-be has been missing access to her brother’s apt pool back in GR. So tonight I’ll be enjoying that surprise with a swim. Yes Flowers, a good card indeed.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but some things bare repeating: I’m still in the infancy of truly understanding Lenormand cards. They fascinate me with their curious array of symbolism. I think this symbolism fascinates me more knowing this was originally a German traveling game and from that someone based a system of cartomancy on it. Some cards in the deck can –at times– confuse me with their meanings as it relates to their symbolism. The Key is not one of those cards. It’s a pretty straight forward card.
The Key, as the name suggests, is about gaining access, having a breakthrough, or discovering something. I’m not quite sure as of yet as to how to relate it to my everyday using it as a single card read. Within an actual Lenormand spread I know the closer it is to my woman card the more important it becomes. The timing for the card is November, so that is fitting. It’s kind of a coincidental card to draw though. Earlier today as I was unpacking more of our moving boxes I discovered my gent’s box of (we call them) dormant keys. These are keys belonging to locks for tons of long gone doors. My gent keeps them because he believes the more types of keys you have the more able you’ll be to find the right one to open a locked door. *This card is from my Butterfly Circus Lenormand. I just got done watching My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding and was inspired to give it some bling! Till tomorrow, enjoy the day.