Tarot, Tea, & Me - A Tarot Readers Community - The Tarot Forum

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Tarot of the Sweet Twilight - Deck Review
By Jewel

The Tarot of the Sweet Twilight by Cristina Benintende was published by LoScarabeo in 2009.  This deck transports you into the mysterious in-between time of twilight; to a surreal world somewhere between life and death, dreams and wakefulness, reality and imagination.  It is populated by haunting characters in surreal landscapes.  If you are willing to step in, you will find yourself in a place where you will experience the bitter-sweetness that lies within melancholy … and more.  This is a deck that touches the heart, calls to the imagination, and sparks intuition.  In describing the deck what first comes to my mind is that it looks like a cross between the Fey Tarot (also by LoScarabeo) and a Tim Burton film.

The Tarot of the Sweet Twilight is based on personal symbolism to the artist, not esoteric symbolism.  The vibrant and rich coloring does not lend itself ...

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The Mystic Dreamer - Deck Review
By Jewel

The Mystic Dreamer Tarot, by Heidi Darras, is a photo-manipulated deck printed by Llewellyn in 2008.  The deck was born of Ms. Darras interest in creating a deck of her own and the encouragement she received on Deviant Art.  As Ms. Darras notes in the Artist Note section of the companion book, she wanted to create an emotional deck, and to reveal the hidden emotion within each card.  She also wanted to create a deck that had an aura of mystery and a dreaminess about it.  That I feel she achieved.

The art is done via photo-manipulation.  The art has a romantic, dramatic, and dreamy feel to it.  For the most part the deck is really beautiful but there are some cards in which the technique just did not work out as hoped, examples are the 7 of Swords and King of Pentacles to name a couple.  Overall though the deck is pretty.  The cards are framed with a ¼ inch parchment style b...

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Joie de Vivre - Deck Review
By Jewel

The Joie de Vivre, French for Joy of Life, is a deck created by artist Paulina Cassidy and published by US Games in 2011.  The cards are 2 ¾ X 4 ¾ and of quality glossy card stock typical of US Games decks.  The cards are packaged in a flip top box along with a 61 page little white book (LWB).  The LWB includes an introduction, key words, the name and descriptions of the characters on the cards, divinatory meaning, reversed meaning, a small section about the author, and two pages to write notes.  The backs of the cards are golden to yellow with a vine design and are reversible.  The front and back of the cards are framed with a thin black line and have a ¼ inch white border. 

The images are watercolor paintings in pastel colors with vibrant tones.  The images follow the whimsical and unmistakable style I associate with Paulina Cassidy art, but are visually simpler than Ms. Cass...