So collaboration was in FULL crafty mode on Thursday with the lovely Cienna Knights. An interest that binds us together is our love of craft, so this was a great way to utilise our combined skills. I think I’ve learned throughout my design career that collaboration is just as much about finding common interest as it is about celebrating differences between creatives. It’s always good to have a mix of both so you know everyone round the table is giving and getting something from the project or discussion.
We had so much fun with this stage of the project. We both decided a great way to celebrate our creative hands-on approach was to design our set of cards using different mediums. We began the morning by settling on a size (we decided to use the standard size of a tarot card for a little witchy flavour) and then discussed a continuous marker to bind the deck together. Cienna had sketched out some gorgeous border designs which I then drew up on Illustrator so we could see what works best. We had chosen a simple colour scheme of Black, White and Gold in our previous meeting so we chatted about how we could use this across the cards. Cienna had the amazing idea of using the foil printing facilities within Kingsway to add little flair to the border and any other touches.
Our tarot card border design
After all this was set, it was time to get crafting! We took it a symbol at a time, each choosing a symbol we felt drawn to. We then quickly discussed what we wanted to use for the design, got the go-ahead from the other person and got going. We knew we wanted to make good headway in the one day. I think we have both agreed we don’t want this project to take up tons of time or resources, as it’s more about the social experiment this is to create and about learning to work together. Using a mixture of digital, sketching, painting and stitching we had a good set of cards ready to go. We then scanned in what we had and started to place them into our digital border to see if we were happy. Not going to lie, I am pretty excited how we’ve managed to keep our individual styles yet they still tie in together beautifully. We both realised that schedules may clash for the rest of the week so decided to split up the remaining symbols and work alone. I don’t think this will be an issue at all as we had seen how well our styles work together anyway. I think we want to get a first print out early next week and move forward from there.
Literally getting everything out on the table
Ciennas fish is to die for! I think we need to name this guy…
Getting there!