Exciting Black Lilly News!

I think that 4 e-mails in one week from people who were wondering if I ever going to finish the tarot deck, plus listening to "witches Abroad" my Terry Pratchett finally pushed me over the edge and I finally got off my lazy ass (just to sit it again on the floor where the books and pens are) and finished the last Suite of the Black Lilly deck, which I started working on about a year and a half ago.

By now, a lot of the first cards looks sort of too simple to me and not at all exciting, plus there is a lot in the process of both making the original designs and the actual production I would have done differently.

I wonder how long before I start a whole new deck, which I'm already starting to think about...

I still need to write the instructions and probably take a trip to the paper store, and maybe also the fabric store, but I hope the have the first deck up for sell in the beginning of next week.

A dream about cards

Me and a few other people, most of which I don't know in reality, are playing a card game.

The cards have both a drawing and a written explanation on them, and each card also have it's value in money printed on. Each card have an object or an animal or a person or a plant on it, the purpose of the game is to swap cards with the other opponents and get 4 cards that are the closest topic wise (like 4 "animals" cards, or 4 "fishes" cards) while also trying to get the higher value cards in the series you build.

The game is both a game and a divination, the texts and images on the cards and the series the player are supposed to say something about the players and lives them advice about the future.

I have landed into the game from a different part of the dream, and both me and another character (Ned maybe) have to get into it even though we don't understand the rules and don't even know what cards we are holding. I'm starting to look at my cards and to my surprise, they are, even though I have yet to start swapping, really good, I have 2 dog cards (one of them is a sharpay) and one bird card (I think it was an owl). As far as the game goes, I can maybe cash out on the "Animals" series, or go on playing and try to rank higher with the "Dogs" series, it all depend on what my last card is.

When I reach for it, I realize it's not a card at all, but a folded letter that was folded into a card size. I know, in the dream, that I got the letter over 2 years ago, but never read it, I open it to discover a lot of photos of this one girl who I've never met before. When I read the letter, this girl who wrote it is sharing with me the fact that she just discovered she was adopted and decided to seek her biological parents. She found them and was amazed to see the physical similarities and now she lives with her biological family trying to catch up on a whole life of not knowing one another.

I remember that the reason why I did not respond or read the letter was that I though it was vain to include so many photos, but finally reading it, I realize that the photos are half of her and half of her mom when she was young and that the mass of photos wasn't about vanity, but about showing me the family similarity. I try to think if there's a way I can still answer it but I know it's just too late.

Mounting Spray

One of the things that I got really used to over the past couple of years is finishing every project before going to sleep. It's the advantage of making my own hours and working for myself - I don't have to wake up a certain hours on most days, and so every craft project or art piece can be finished before I turn in.

It means I get to see a lot of sunrise, and also that I wake up sort of confused and disoriented, but with a metaphorically (though very rarely physically) clean desk.

So tonight I was working on an order for new tarot cards, a very nice buyer ordered the 3 minor arcana decks and I decided to make 2 of each, one for her and one for the store.

Making cards is a strange process - I already done the design and also, know what works best color wise, there isn't that much creativity in making them, just a series of small tasks: printing, painting, cutting, mounting, cutting again. printing, cutting pasting and painting the instruction. cutting fabric, ironing, sewing, ironing again and putting it all together.

So tonight, at around 10:00 I was done with the painting of the cards and as I was mounting, I discovered that the mounting spray is basically empty, there's just nothing in it, I manage to paste one deck, but the second is still sitting on the floor having to wait till tomorrow, till the art store opens and I can get some more.

I really hate not being able to finish those, it feels as if they are looking at me...

Rockabilly Blog Give-a-way!

I'm doing a store cleaning and sadly parting with some old pieces that somehow never sold. I'm storing some of the art work and toys for later use, but looking at those two items together - they looked too nice to just put in a box and be forgotten for a while.

So, I decided to celebrate summer (though NY feels like winter now more then summer) and the beginning of car races season with 2 rockabilly inspired item give away! I can't wait to take a big ride, watch the race, talk to some cool people and feel my horizon expended. This can be a really hot father day's present, if your father's into cars, chicks and playing cards (and if so, you have a very cool father indeed).

If you want to win this awesome prize, all you need to do is visit my store and let me know, in a comment, what is your favorite item by me.

Happy rockabilly summer!

Raffle will be held on June 1st. and the winner will be announced in the blog. Please leave an e-mail so I can contact you if you won.

Inspiration cards

I had a small idea on Monday, I planned to give the whole thing about 2 hours work and see how it goes.

Well, that's how it started and before I knew it I was in illustration craziness, producing about 15 illustrations par day, scanning and working from noon till sunrise.

This is the story that started the whole thing, a memory from a really moving moment a few years ago. I was in a dinner party for a friend who was getting married the week after, it was an all girls evening in some restaurant in Israel. One of the girls brought a deck of tiny cards and each of us took one, each card had a word on it that was supposed to be relevant for that specific moment.

The girl who was getting married picked up a card but only after the whole deck was passed it turned out she had 2 cards in her hand, one was "birth" and the other was "independence" it was just so right, especially a couple of weeks after the wedding when we all found out that she was already pregnant at the time of the party.

So, I decide to make my own deck of small massages from the universe deck of cards, and I call them Inspiration deck - it's a 52 cards deck, each illustrated by me. and they are meant to give people inspiration, direction and interpretation to a moment in life. All it take is just take a card out of the deck and contemplating the massage it brings into your moment.

And this is the result! a 52 cards deck! If I knew how complicated this project would become then I would never have started it, but I'm so glad I did! because I love the result.

Some cards

I've been reading a book by an Israeli therapist called "Tarot in psychotherapy" which I got on my trip to Israel. It had a lot of pages and I was scared it would be too technical for me, but sadly, it was quite the opposite. Maybe I expected a book for tarot reader who want to connect it to therapy and end up getting a book for psychotherapist who are interested in divination - I found the interpretation she offered on the cards to be very simplistic and also, very much imposed on alchemical notions and other myth, in this odd post modernistic approach in which when you simplify things enough everything is connected to everything.

The only really interesting part was the preface which was very well written and really inspiring in the writer quoting from Jung and other psychoanalysts and philosophers in relation to mystics and divination.

I'm disappointed that this book wasn't what I wanted it to be, but since i moved on to reading "whale rider" now, I don't mind so much...

Cards and Rides

Summer is here, well, spring at least, and it's awesome! we are having so much fun. Last weekend we took Olga, the motorcycle out of the apartment and back where she belong - in the street! ever since then we took her out for a ride each and every day. It's so much fun, I missed riding so much when all 3 of us were stuck in the apartment for the winter and it's so wonderful to be out and about now.



Sadly, that means that I'm doing very little of anything else... And I really didn't craft enough this week, however, I did make some sexy art work for this year's Grafuck book, I really hope I'm going to manage to get in, I got rejected last year and so I'm not hoping for too much, but still it would be really great if I do.

Still sick

Still sick, 3 days in bed and going nuts! I can't stand it anymore - I have so much stuff I want to do and absolutely no energy to do it with... I just sleep all day, drink tea and feel like there's a big dog sitting on my chest. I feel like an old woman complaining...

In a few hours of relative health yesterday, trying not to sleep so I can actually do sleep at night, I did manage to finish one deck of cups, it took me about 4 times more then my usual amount of time, but at least I wasn't completely useless that day.

Also, finally manage to finish Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man since I was in bed all the time and couldn't do anything but read. It's such a complicated book I'm not quite sure what to make of it, I'm not even sure what the whole thing was about. However, I did find a lot of parts of it very inspiring and made a small photo project on flickr inspired by it.

Valentine's

I thought tarot would make a great Valentine's gift - check out how your love life is going to go on the up coming year. Plus, the illustrations are mostly of nude or semi-nude ladies so that's good for the whole sexy factor. However, all the colors available in the store right now were green-blue and black and white, ot very valentine oriented.

Usually pink is not my favorite, to say the lease, I find it too sweet and girly, but the gray paper balanced it in a really lovely way and it finally gave me the push I needed in using the most beautiful fabric ever that I have been hording for the past month - pink and red large mums with a brown center on cream.

This is really the most romantic and special valentine's present I can think of. If you want to go beyond the random chocolate and jewelery and give something unique and wonderful, this is the way to go...

Check it out!