New Deck Launch: Color Outside the Lines
Nurture & Revitalize your inner child
It’s been a year since the launch of my Life Line Tarot.
Now, there’s a new version coming that’s bigger and brighter.
It funded on Kickstarter in 18 hours!.
Read the full story below.
Remember being transported to other worlds and bringing characters to life through color?
Life Line Tarot: Color Outside the Lines is a limited-edition tarot deck to nurture your inner child and revitalize your intuition through its powerful and playful reimagining of the Smith-Waite/Rider Tarot.
The Deck
The bold single-line artwork of the Life Line Tarot ignites your intuition with a modern scryer's take on a beloved but dated tarot deck. By coloring outside the lines for this bigger and brighter version, I've brought in the fun and wonder of childhood without sacrificing depth. But this isn't a childish deck that's too cute to get real. And it's not some pretty but superficial thing. I love those decks as much as the next person, but I wanted to offer something new and practical for tarot work.
The Life Line Tarot: Color Outside the Lines will dive deep when you're ready for adventure, and it will open you up to amazing tarot readings. As someone who started reading tarot more than 25 years ago, I wanted to design a deck that works for tarot readers, not just photoshoots. It's familiar but fresh, and it's infused with subtle nuances that activate esoteric knowledge.
The deck is 80 cards on 330gsm smooth card stock with a light gloss coating. It's flexible yet firm, and it shuffles beautifully.
Nurture your inner child and invite them to shed light when you need it most.
But tarot is more than cards.
The Color Outside the Lines booklet guides you to finding meaning in the cards, whatever your reading style. But it breaks the mold with specialty exercises for connecting deeply with your inner child so that you can heal the Wounded Child and champion the Magical Child within. And those who want guidance for their daily one-card readings will find affirmations and oracle guidance for each of the major arcana.
The main reward for this campaign is a copy of the limited-edition deck with accompanying guidebook. But there are other ways to enhance your experience! My other pocket-size Life Line decks will help you explore your intuition on the go, and if you love tarot artwork for your wall, altar, or notebook, I’ve got you covered!
For those wanting more direct guidance through this work, make sure to sign up for the limited-seating seminar I'm hosting on inner child readings. Learn to read for yourself and for others: Saturday, August 13, 12noon PDT. You can add it on or get a discounted bundle deal with all three of my decks.
Assuming there are no additional global crises or local shipping delays beyond the usual, your rewards(s) should arrive by August.
The deck is 80 cards of 330gsm smooth card stock with a playing card finish for easy shuffling.
Rejuvenation. Just Add Color.
The line work of the Life Line Tarot mixes the familiar icons of Pamela Colman Smith's illustrations with the abstract possibilities of messy lines and blank space. Scry into the surface patterns or step into the world and fill in missing details. As with the "missing" vowels of the major arcana and court cards, you don't need to have everything spelled out to find meaning because divination lets you see what's not visible.
Sometimes less is more, and sometimes there's room for enhancement. As I started coloring in my own copy of the original cards by hand using the markers I had lying around, I started to see the cards in a new light. I was worried that filling in those blank spaces with color would close them off from the very magic I'd intended to activate through minimalism, but it didn't. It opened something new, something playful and powerful that I'm excited to share with you.
Be your own hero. Release your burdens and discover healing.
When creating the color line work for the deck, I tried different techniques but eventually came back to markers—and not even expensive ones. The digital marker I most loved reminded me of the sort of marker I could have found in any friend's house or public elementary classroom. It was cheap and imperfect, but it kept me honest to the purpose. Whenever I created a stray overlapping line, I couldn't hide it. And I had to put my seriousness and perfectionism to one side. Nevertheless, the new color lines are the perfect complement to the sometimes unpredictable paths unleashed in the original Life Line Tarot.
And you know what? Once you look closely at the marker work, it's hard not to be taken right back to childhood.
I was a very easily entertained kid, probably because I was open to seeing magic in the mundane.
A Wonder-full Inspiration
There was always something magical about coloring, wasn't there? I can still feel the rough, well-worn carpet of the living room where I would lie on my stomach with markers and coloring book before me. The TV carried on in the background, but it was just noise, easily ignored. Those moments weren't perfect, but they sure seem powerful now.
One of my greatest joys is helping people rediscover the wonder in their everyday lives, and childhood provided many of us with easy access to magic. What I realized as I worked on the color art for the Life Line Tarot was that it was simple, and the simplicity was healing. Even better, as I markered my stylus across my tablet—tongue poking out whenever I concentrated a little too hard—I realized that I was essentially playing with a digital coloring book. I was flooded with happy memories. (Know that one of the stretch goals will be a free digital coloring book for all deck pledges!)
Looking back now, the awakening of the inner child with this deck makes perfect sense. Inner child work is part of my broader mission to help people uncover forgotten selves within them to help with healing and empowerment. That includes past lives and ancestral ties but also, of course, the inner child. I wasn't able to see the thread between inner child and powerful magic at first, but the colors I used helped me find that connection.
The Aces pull colors from the major arcana associated with their element.
Esoteric & Intuitive
Not every tarot reader cares about their inner child, and much of my work doesn't focus on the bright and wonderful, so I've brought in a touch of occultism through color to help activate the depths of the deck.
If you know the esoteric history of tarot, you know the Golden Dawn. And this deck takes the color scales codified by the Golden Dawn and uses those guides to bring life to each of the major arcana. With a few exceptions that desperately needed a little something to lighten them up, each of my major arcana cards features only the four or five colors assigned to that major in the scales. The color palette for each of the minor arcana comes from its associated majors.
This provides esoteric depth to every card in the deck even when the art appears (deceptively) simple. The colors encourage a deep connection to the magic and craft of tarot reading, and the subtlety of this reference to the esoteric means that you can enjoy the magic without being trapped in a murky or cerebral experience. Your readings can be deep and bright at the same time.
Some Final Details
Cards are 2.75"x4.75" (70×120mm) 330gsm smooth card stock to give a sturdy yet flexible feel without negatively affecting the art. I know some people like linen because it shuffles more easily, but I can riffle shuffle and bridge these cards just fine, and the slight gloss finish makes them just that right level of slick. (I’ve posted a video to Instagram of it if you want to see for yourself.)
Meeting the base goal means that cards will come in a simple tuck box. The final stretch goal would change that to a magnetic flap box.
As with the original Life Line Tarot deck, there are 80 cards, which includes two bonus cards to help you put things into perspective, the Muse and the Labyrinth.
The guidebook will include card meanings and interpretation strategies as in most tarot decks, plus spreads and exercises for powerful inner child work. Each of the major arcana entries will also feature a related affirmation, as well as oracle guidance to help those who want to get more out of a daily one-card reading routine. The current plan for the guidebook is a 52-page black & white booklet, but that will expand into a longer, colorful booklet if we hit that stretch goal.
Pledge Rewards
All three Life Line decks can come at you with special bundled orders and add-ons. The original black-and-white Life Line Tarot and Life Line Lenoracle are bridge size cards with a linen card stock and slick finish that highlight the power and playfulness of playing cards.
The Life Line Tarot: Color Outside the Lines deck and its accompanying guidebook are the main thing.
There's an early bird special for the first 24 hours or 100 pledges, whichever comes first.
There are package deals for buying the deck along with my other decks and an even bigger discount for a limited number of supporters wanting the seminar workshop on inner child readings.
If you want to support the project but don’t want the deck, you can receive hand-colored cards from the original Life Line Tarot.
And there are also two large-order deals for approved retailers at a hefty discount. Please email me if you are an interested retailer before pledging.
Add-Ons
There are a few add-on options, mostly related to extra copies of the deck and my other decks, as well as a set of Life Line Tarot stickers and archival-quality art prints. But there is also a special two-hour seminar workshop on inner child readings available to add on as well!
Stretch Goals
I have a lot of stretch goals planned out for this deck.
These include a bonus vinyl sticker (when we hit $4,444), digital inner child fun (yes, a digital coloring book of the majors is part of that), enhancements for the booklet, and the super stretch goal of a magnetic flap box. As we hit goals, I’ll reveal a new stretch goal.
Why so much stretching? I want the deck to be affordable even if we can't hit huge pledge numbers, and since this will be a limited edition I won't be ordering hundreds and hundreds of extra decks to sell later that would lower the overall price.
A fancy box and booklet expansions are nice to have but not necessary. And I can make the digital exercise books available for purchase after release if we don't hit the goals to make them free, so the focus is the deck. And everything else is a bonus!
Limited Edition
How limited this edition is will depend on the campaign, but I don't expect that there will be more copies of this edition than twice what is needed for fulfilling pledges (e.g., if 200 decks are needed to fulfill rewards, the total run of this edition would probably be 400 or less). Each of the decks will come with a numbered and signed copyright card that you can keep with your deck if you ever want to "verify" it as authentic to this edition.
Important Note for International Orders
I ship out of the United States, and international shipping costs include insurance for the order. But I work with a bulk exporter to keep the cost as low as I possibly can.
Because of the limited amount of business I do with other countries, I am neither required nor authorized to collect VAT on behalf of a customer in any other country. If Kickstarter does that for pledges made from your country, great! If not, you will have to coordinate how you pay that on receipt of goods.
I do not pay customs fees for customers. (Even Etsy doesn't do that.) Also note that I will not label your order as a "gift" in order to lessen customs costs. It's sketchy, and it's not something over which anyone should be asked to jeopardize their business.
Last, please know your local laws. I will not refund or reimburse you if your country prohibits esoteric materials such as tarot cards and destroys the deck upon customs inspection or otherwise prevents you from collecting your reward.