Owning your deck: Cutting Borders

Are you afraid to damage your precious deck?

Fear not, everyone probably felt a little squeezy at the idea of cutting off borders with a pair of scissors (or more elaborate mschinery!).
At first, I just looked at youtube videos where people cut their decks to pieces and draw on the cards with edding and other nasty things.

I hate borders.

I always hated borders with a passion. Borders are the enemy. I can#t stand borders, especially white, thick borders. Those can ruin the entire deck for me.

Patrick Valenza's Deviant Moon Tarot Original and Borderless Edition. 

Picture credit: Patrick Valenza.

The first tarot deck I ever got for myself was Patrick Valenza's Deviant Moon Tarot. The Original Edition. Back then, I wasn't even aware of the borderless edition and I also wasn't aware of the fact that you could buy a borderless edition of any kind of deck and if you had asked me, I probably wouldn't have known what could possibly be hideous in the bordered edition.

If you take a look at those two cards, you can see that the bordered edition's imagery is greatly diminished by the green and white borders. The images don't really pop, like they do in the borderless edition (in which the titles are black, which is much more fitting than yellow). If in comparison, the original really bothers you and you don't think you could work with it while the borderless version really appeals to you, you're like me.

Making yourself cut up your precious deck

While cutting borders is a hard step to take (if the deck was expensive or has some meaning to you, of course you don't want to damage the cards like that and risk cutting in the wrong place etc.), it's often the first one people take when customizing their decks. Why? Because borders are the enemy, that's why. If something really bothers you during a reading, at one point you are going to have to realize that Tarot is a useless tool if you can't work with it unless the borders are gone.

I realized this very soon, but it took me a long time to see that I wouldn't be able to click with those decks unless the borders were gone.

The perfect materials

You *can* cut your deck up with a pair of scissors. If you have good control over your hands and do it slowly, this is maybe even the most accurate method. But it really depends on how good you are at following a line on a paper with a pair of scissors. So I suggest you try this out on a pair of paper: just draw a black line across and try cutting it up.

Two of my decks were made borderless with scissors:

 The first deck I ever did: as you can see, the edges are a little rough still. The cardstock was pretty thick, so that made it harder for me to be accurate.

 The second deck: Much smoother and more accurate. The edges are nearly perfect.

As you can see, it worked out quite nicely. Obviously you can't expect your decks to be completely aligned at the edges (like they would be if this had been done by a machine), but it's close enough. I found that while cutting edges with scissors is pretty accurate, it's also extremely time-consuming. You sit and sit and sit and cut and cut and cut. And once you're finsihed cutting, the edges still need to be rounded!

Buy a corner-cutter

My number one piece of advice for people who want their borders gone: get a tool to round the edges for you. Cutting in a straight line is simple enough, but rounding the edges with a pair of chunky scissors will probably leave you with a very uneven result. Don't do that! Just get something like this:

This is the Sunstar Kadomaru Corner Cutter (available through retailers like amazon)

A corner cutter works like a stapler. You insert the corner of the card, you push down the lever, and ta-da! You're corners are rounded. The Kadomaru has the added bonus of offering 3 different sizes. S, for tiny rounded corners, M for normal, and L for a very smooth curve. You can try this with a regular paper first, to see which size is perfect for you.

Additional material

If you want to cut borders like a pro, or like me, have too many decks that need to be liberated from nasty borders to cut them up with simple scissors, get yourself a paper-guillotine.

I have no idea what brand I got here, but this paper guillotine cost around $15, so it's not that much. Basically you just put in the card and pull down the lever and the border is gone. It's very simple and efficient compared to the scissors-method. I definetely recommend getting a guillotine if you have many decks to deborder, because doing it by hand will make your wrists ache and takes ages.

Don't be afraid of hurting your deck! Tarot or Lenormand or Oracle is your tool! If you don't use the cards, they are literally useless. If the borders really bother you, get rid of them. Once you've cut borders on one deck, you'll stop being afraid of the process and instead enjoy creating and owning a unique piece.

Blessings and balance ~

Peachess