There are hundreds of great tarot decks on the market, but no deck will ever be as meaningful as the one you make yourself. You can create a personalized deck in less time than you think. Just follow my 10-step system.

How to Create a Collage Tarot

Art is good for the soul. It’s an easy way to express your understanding of the cards, learn the symbolism of the tarot, and create a deeply meaningful tarot deck. It’s inexpensive, and it’s practically free. Best of all, you can complete a Majors-only deck that’s ready to read in a single day — and a full deck of all 78 cards won’t take much longer.

1. First, gather some basic art supplies, such as markers, glitter pens, blank index cards, scissors, and glue. Glue sticks and rubber cement work better than liquid glue, which wrinkles paper.[1]
2. Collect a big stack of old magazines — preferably ones printed on heavy, coated stock. Fashion magazines and catalogs have the best pictures of people, and travel magazines have the best scenery. National Geographic magazines have both, and most used bookstores sell them for just pennies. If you want to include pictures of family, friends, and pets, find snapshots or make scans and prints that you can cut apart.
3. If you’re new to the art of collage — or even if you simply haven’t done collage for a while — search Google Images, Flickr, or Pinterest to get ideas and inspiration from other artists’ work. You probably won’t believe how many clever ways there are to combine images in a collage.
4. Now go through your magazines, looking for images that appeal to you and reflect your understanding of the tarot. In the next few pages, you’ll find a list of symbols that are associated with each card. Use it as a starting point for your search — but be flexible and remain open to the art you have on hand.[2] In fact, you’ll have the best results if you adapt the traditional card images to the imagery that you like and understand. You can even retitle the cards to better suit your needs.

At this point, don’t worry too much about the components of any one card. You’re still just gathering resources.

5. Tear the magazine pages out and sort them in five piles:
   • Scenery. Find full-page images that you can use as backdrops, like beautiful landscapes, decorator rooms, classic paintings, crowd scenes, and cityscapes. Images of open sky — particularly starry night skies — are especially useful for many tarot card backgrounds.If you can’t find enough big photos in magazines, you can also create cohesive-looking backgrounds out of wrapping paper, scrapbooking paper, old greeting cards or postcards, sheet music, maps, newspaper pages, or pages torn from dictionaries or old cookbooks.
   • People. Keep your eyes open for images of people who are upside-down. Those are surprisingly rare, and you’ll need one for your Hanged Man.
   • Animals. You can use them as pets for the people in your cards, or have them stand in for the people themselves. Animals that correspond to the creatures of the zodiac are always a good find. Also look for animals that symbolize the elements, such as birds for air, cows for earth, and so on.
   • Objects. Find stand-alone images that you can use for props and symbolic touches. You might be lucky enough to find wands, cups, swords, and pentacles, either to add to your Major Arcana cards or to complete the whole deck. You can use common images to work repeated motifs into your cards. Instead of pentacles, for example, you could use watches, because time is money, or you could substitute photos of lipstick for wands.
   • Words and phrases. Clip and save any headlines, words, or phrases that seem to echo a tarot theme.

5. Use file folders to collect and categorize images for each card.
6. As you create your deck, focus on one card at a time. Concentrate on its meaning as you rifle through your images. You’ll probably be surprised at how quickly you’ll find the appropriate elements for your collage. Let the work flow naturally. Work with the art you have on hand, and don’t try to force your cards into being.
7. Cut corners — literally. When you’re cutting out the components of each card, it’s okay to leave a little border around each piece. That way you don’t need to worry about the fine details — or be concerned about accidentally chopping off a finger or a nose. If you do want to be precise, which is time-consuming, you’ll need a cutting mat and an X-ACTO knife.
8. You can embellish your cards with paint, markers, bits of ribbon, fabric, or lace … or anything you like.
9. When you finish creating your cards, you can label them, laminate them, or cover them with clear, self-adhesive plastic. Many of your materials probably won’t be archival quality, though, so if you want them to last forever you should scan and print them, or send them to a photo processor. You can also scan them and add creative flourishes with photo-editing software.

Ready to begin? Review this checklist of traditional tarot imagery.

[1] If you plan to scan your cards and have them processed as photos, be sure to size them appropriately. 4×6 is usually a good size for photo prints.

[2] If you want to create a full deck of 78 cards, you can find a full list of standard symbols and images in my book, Simple Fortunetelling with Tarot Cards: Corrine Kenner’s Complete Guide.