Happy Friday! How was everyones week? This was the first week in a month where my family has not been sick and the weather has been decent so I spent a lot of time outside with my two boys. They are the super fun age of 4 and almost 2 :)
Well we are SO EXCITED we unlocked the first pay bump for the artists!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!! You are bringing much needed love and joy to a community that really needs it right now. So we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
We have 6 days left to go, and I will be pushing our BackerKit ads to reach as many people as we can before the campaign ends on May 23rd. By the way, I somehow, due to lack of brain, have this ending at 4am EDT! Which for some is fine, but not in EDT time zone I would expect most to be sleeping. Including yours truly, but I will see if I can wake up to see the ending!!! I meant to set it to 11:11 am EDT but I am not sure how that happened.Â
This is our first campaign on BackerKit, as you know, and it has been a bit of a steep learning curve. I still am so very happy to be here, and I really hope we can encourage more creators to make the move to this platform.
Now for a POLL!
So, as some of you may know we ore offering a special add-on! For the very first time ever we will be offering an EXCLUSIVE (meaning you can only get this in the campaign) spread book featuring the art from this gorgeous Anniversary deck. We will have a spread from every tarot deck we have done, two wild card and Oracle spreads, all 4 elementals and all 4 witches of the seasons (special cards commissioned just for our anniversary deck). The book will be letter sized (8.5 by 11 inches), and SPIRAL BOUND so it will lay flat. And the cover will be this design with the gold actual gold holo foil to match the deck. Because as you know I am extra.
The spreads will be written by the Spread Goddess, Trish Sullivan, who is a magician when it comes to creating in-depth spreads. These will have 4 queries each, and focus on the theme voted on by the community, and feature the artwork for the theme chosen by the community.
As a reminder, these are the ones we have already voted on:
And this poll attached we will be voting for the image for the theme winner for our Astral deck - Aim for the Stars!
If you would love to add this very exclusive book to your pledge, you can do so in the add-ons tab, or you could treat yourself and upgrade to the highest tier which contains this book! It is a great way to support amazing artists AND get a super exclusive and special spread book to go with this very special Anniversary deck.Â
So without further adieu, here are the options. Please make sure to vote in the attached poll!
Which image should we choose from the Astral cards in this deck for Aim for the Stars Spread Theme ?
Option 1: King of Wands by Mike Tenebrae
Option 2: Seven of Pentacles by Natacha Chora
That is all for now! Can't wait to see the poll results!!!
Have a great weekend! Hope you get to do something fun :)
All the stretch goal designs
Heya! I'm a bit late with this update, as we hit all stretch goals pretty much immediately. :D Thank you so much again! So, while this campaign is mostly about the soda girls, they do still belong in my wider series of beverage girls which so far has mostly consisted about teas. I thought it'd be fun to include them here in the campaign, but they need some introduction because there's a little bit more behind some of them! I'll just go through them one by one, in reverse chronological order of their creation :DÂ
This post contains no "important" info but is just for those who are interested in the artwork of the tea series or want some help with deciding.
Gyokuro
Gyokuro illustration
Gyokuro is my latest tea girl, and a bit of an outlier of the series - but very intentionally so. The tea she is named after is a very high quality and expensive one, and the reason for that is that the plants get shaded from the sun 3 weeks before harvest, which produces a finer, sweeter aroma compared to most other Japanese green teas. This is why she's carrying a parasol!Â
Next four are teas infused with floral aromas :D
Flowering Jasmine Tea
Jasmine illustration
Jasmine tea is one of China's favourite floral teas. A fun variant of this is the flowering tea balls, which often also include Jasmine but also other flowers such as Chrysanthemum. They're little balls of green tea that are sewn together, and when hot water is poured on them, it opens up to expose the flowers. Hence she has all the little flowers inside of her. Her garment is a Chinese hanfu.
Aparajita (Butterfly Pea Tea)
Butterfly Pea Tea
Butterfly Pea Tea is the tea with the MOST striking color ever - bright blue - made solely from butterfly pea flowers, also called Aparajita in Sanskrit. Due to the long history of its consumption in ayurveda I went with an Indian-style interpretation of it (and because I love sarees), although it is also consumed in many other countries in SEA.Â
 Trà Sen (Vietnamese Lotus Tea)
Lotus Tea
Lotus tea is made by stuffing green tea inside of lotus flowers. The tea itself does not contain any petals but absorbs the flower's scent during the process, resulting in a pleasant flowery aroma! (And the process ivery pretty)Â
Sakurayu - Cherry Blossom Tea
Cherry Blossom Tea
Everyone loves cherry blossoms, but nobody seems to love them as much as the Japanese do. The pure cherry blossom tea (Sakurayu) consists of cherry blossoms that are pickled in salt and vinegar - a very unique taste that might be odd at first. The resulting brew is a pinkish golden colors, with the soft pink flower floating on top.
Tieguanyin (Oolong)
Tieguanyin
Tieguanyin is a Chinese Oolong tea that is named after a Buddhist icon Guanyin (or Kwan Yin), a goddess adapted from Hindu religion into buddhism and many other religions. Here I chose to depict her in a pose very similar to many statues of said goddess! Oolongs are half-fermented, and depending on how much they are fermented their tastes can change quite a bit on the spectrum between nutty and floral.
Baihao Yinzhen (White Tea)
White tea
Baihao Yinzhen is a white tea and the name means "white hair silver needle" because the tea leaves have a little fur-like texture. I did not take the name too literally, and settled for an overall golden color instead of white, closer to the color of the actual tea than what the name suggests. Still I put some hair needles in her bun! It's a minimally processed tea, and consists only of leaf buds instead of fully grown and opened leaves.
Darjeeling (Black Tea)
Black Tea
Darjeeling is one of India's most famous teas, and the logo shows a woman with earrings and necklaces so I knew I had to depict her as a character! The tea itself is a deep orange/brown color, sometimes going in a purple-ish direction. It is less bitter than most other black tea, more mild and almost flowery which I think are great traits to depict in a feminine character!
Sencha (Green Tea)
My very first tea girl, of a very famous tea: Japanese sencha! Her coloring is informed not just by the color of green tea which is green to golden, but also common colors in the packaging design, which often feature pink tones too. Sencha is a very broad category of teas, ranging from mundane everyday teas to high end special ones such as Shincha.Â
Okay that's enough yapping for today! Let me know if this was interesting :D I will prepare new goals to unlock this weekend, and here's your reminder again that you can suggest goals in the Discussion in the community tab of this campaign! <3
Wow, as I’m typing this, we are so incredibly close to our artists pay bump at 75K. This is some thing that we have really been working towards!!!
We are a pretty small Indy company, so we don’t have the kind of budget that large companies may have to pay their artists what they TRULY deserve. So we are so grateful for all of the love and support for our projects and for artists. We couldn’t do any of this without you.
We’re constantly thinking of how and what to gift you. We had all of these ideas at the start, but if you have been following us a while, you know that we work organically, and tend to use our intuition, and intuition can’t be planned. So we are probably going to change a few things around with achievement goals, and achieve them sooner than later than we had originally planned. We hope this will keep up the excitement for the last 10 days and make this a super epic bash where everyone gets a lot of really cool exclusive things that you will not get outside the project.
On that note...
Release the dream team card!
We have decided, since we are SO CLOSE to giving all of our artists their first pay bump, we will release the Dream Team card!!!
The Dream Team card is incredibly special to us. It was lovingly created by the one and only Michael Calandra. He painted it for our upcoming 78 Tarot Masters Medieval deck, which will be launching next year. We are including it in our birthday deck, because as the three of cups, it is the epitome of our project. We are the heartbeat and the soul behind every single deck. We work so hard and love our artists more than anything and we really want to celebrate with all of you with this amazing Dream Team card.
It features, Trish Sullivan, Delphine Malidore, and myself, Kayti Welsh. We are the three founders of 78 tarot. Without these incredible souls, none of this project would ever exist. We celebrate every single one of you, and we thank every single one of you for helping us make our dreams come true year after year.Â
Let's talk Exclusive Add-Ons!
Next, I want to talk about two of our exclusive add-ons. We are offering these very exclusive add-ons that contain the artwork of cards from the deck. The artwork is being chosen in polls by all of you, and we will be including the most popular vote as images.
2025 Exclusive Calendar
This calendar is something that we’ve always wanted to do, but we’ve never really figured out a good way to do it. By offering it to you as an exclusive campaign only add-on, we are giving you the chance to own something that nobody else will own.Â
We are using the same printer and it will be printed on beautiful luxurious paper so the colors of the art will really pop. Spiral bound so it’s super easy to hang on the wall flat or to have on your desk flat. The cover will be accented with gold holo to match the card backs. The pages will be 8 1/2 x 11 landscape so the art can be beautifully seen.
We have been voting in polls since the beginning of the launch party pre-campaign, and have chosen a lot of the images already, which you can see below. Want to add it to your pledge? Just select it as an add-on or choose a pledge tier that has it :)Â
The next month we will be voting on is July, and the choices are:
Option 1: Emperor from 78 Tarot Carnival by Stanley Morrison
Option 2: Knight of Wands for 78 Tarot Animal by Gwenevere SingleyÂ
Option 3: Justice for 78 Tarot Carnival by Iris Compiet
Make sure to vote for the image you want for July in the attached poll!
Exclusive Spread Book
If you’ve been following us for a while, you know our amazing Trish Sullivan is the goddess of tarot spreads. She creates spreads for her personal clients, for publications for 78 Tarot as well as free gifts on our social media and newsletter. She also creates them for herself on her own website, and she is phenomenal at what she does.Â
So, for the first time ever, we are offering a spread book like no other. We have been receiving your ideas and your feedback, and we have made it a reality.Â
This book will be 8 1/2 x 11, the size of a letter size paper. It will be beautifully printed artwork that you will choose. We have chosen the following so far. More votes to come starting tomorrow!
You are also voting on the themes. The themes of each spread included in the book are something that is community chosen. We are voting on one theme, and one spread art from every single deck we have ever published. We are also including spreads for our zodiacs, our elementals and our witches of the seasons.
This spread book will be spiral bound so you can lay it flat. Our pocket size deck cards will fit beautifully within this template.
The front cover will have gold holographic to match the rest of the project.
This book as well as the calendar are very exclusive, and will only be offered inside backer kit to raise money for our artists. They will never again be sold by us, or even given away in the future. This is the only chance you will have to get these calendars from us.Â
Feel free to message us at info@ 78tarot.cards if you’d like to ask us any questions. Sometimes we do not get notifications for discussion posts, we do our best to keep up with everything but it’s very easy to miss things. So if you want to reach us immediately and directly just email us.
That’s all for now! We are so gratefulfor everything and everyone and let’s keep this party going so we can just shower you with more wonderful gifts.Â
XOXOÂ
Team 78 Tarot
PS: A few people have asked us - everyone who buys a deck, pocket or regular sized, will get the PDF version of the book, so that means if you get the hard back you also get the PDF.Â
Wow it has been amazing to see our party grow! Thank you so much for being here and for supporting our incredible artists! Because of all of you amazing people we are so very close to a pay bump for all 111 of our artists! Which happens if we hit 75k!!!!Â
A gift for you!Â
We have decided that it is a perfect time to release the very exclusive special Frog of Serenity card by the amazing Annette Hassell as many people are celebrating Mother’s Day this weekend.
We know it’s not a happy time for everyone, so we thought offering this special gift would bring a little smile to the faces of those that need it. How can this frog not make you smile?Â
Frogs hold a very special place in my heart, and for anyone who knows me you know they are my magical spirit guides. They have helped me through my own journey of infertility which I went through for years before I had my two miracles.Â
May this frog celebrate you, comfort you, bless you with abundance peace and serenity.Â
We have decided as a special gift that all the exclusive cards will be included with every reward tier that is mailed and not just the decks. The exclusive cards will only be printed in the big deck format (not pocket) but this way if you want to buy the deck later you will have the special cards that will only be for backers.Â
That’s all for now! How you are all having a magical weekend. Sending energy and love to everyone, and a little bit more to whomever needs a bit extra.Â
Heyyy guys! I can barely believe it, I did not expect to hit the goal in... 40 minutes! Thank you everyone who pledged so early, you're all blowing my mind! This project has been a long dream to me and now it's happening for real which is incredible.
I've started a new discussion where you can throw in ideas for possible stretch goals, since we've already unlocked the first stretch goal and if the pace keeps up for another hour or so we'd be out of stretch goals 🤯 I'd love to make something as a freebie for all backers because I'm seriously so grateful!Â
GREAT news! i need to make little graphics for it first, but one of my fav small batch soap makers, Scents Fur All soapery, has agreed they'll be happy to make some pride soaps for backers!
i'm a big fan of effluvia's work (that's the maker!) and they're a semi-local artisan, so i'm also happy to share my fortune and promote their work. if you just want to jump the gun and buy some of their soaps right away yourself i can hardly blame you!! i'm a huge fan of their work! they've not only made pride flag soaps, but at one point made a rainbow swirl soap with little soap frogs on it... GET IT? a rainbow pond!? turning the frogs gay?!! anyway i love their shop and i hope folks will be as hype for this joining the rewards/add-ons as i am hehe
if you're curious about my soap opinions, i personally love their "catboy cassanova" scent!
edit some hours later... i just got a reply email from a local leather artisan from the ren faire scene and is known for making pride feather keychain/pendants (what could BE more perfect!) and he too is willing to join the project!! i'm waiting on some pics and pricing for the add-ons, but those are also HAPPENING! check out Faewyld Creations!
edit some DAYS later... a pic of feathers being made from an earlier event cedrick the leatherworker went to, but check these babies OUT!!!
i think i've mostly got this sorted out and running smoothly now! i JUST realized today i can re-arrange the pledge levels so they're not in the order i created them lol
i added: an interior shot page! as suggested, thank you again
i also added a slightly less moon-shot tier, and i suppose i'll create some more add-ons too if i can think of them. here's some art i created for that: when i've got completed New! bird art that i'll be adding to the book, i will share it with the backers. but right now i have 3 wips and one of them i want to scrap in favor of a different feathered friend. so many birds. so little time.
keep up the momentum and keep sharing the project if you feel like it!!
this update is just to share i've added the "plus one book to my order" to add-ons, as requested! i've also shuffled the amounts of copies set aside so if more people want to get a custom piece of art with theirs, they can do so!
i'm planning to add a huge tier in case someone wants to just push us towards the hardcover copy goal overnight (we can dream right!!) but i want to get interior photos of the book first and finish up some of the new!!!! art for the inside i'm working on.Â
there's still a few days left til the deadline after all hahaha
