How to Make Your Own Tarot Cards — a simple DIY guide

Supervised by Usatoko WHITE
Professional fortune teller & spiritual advisor

Nyanta

Is there really a way to make my own tarot cards?

Nekosuke

Of course! With a computer design tool or app, you can put together an original deck of your very own.

☾Introduction

When shopping for tarot cards, you may find that no existing deck quite matches the artwork or design you have in mind.

Designing and illustrating your own deck from scratch would be ideal, but not everyone can draw, and not everyone feels confident in their artistic sense.

For anyone in that position, there are design and printing services that make it easy to produce your own tarot deck.

This article walks through the production process, points to watch out for along the way, and how to sell a finished deck, so please use it as a reference.

✦Easy Ways to Make Your Own Tarot Cards

The starting point for making tarot cards is finding your source artwork and putting the deck together.

Building a deck completely from scratch can feel overwhelming once you get into the know-how and information-gathering involved, which is why many people find DIY tarot intimidating.

So here are a few approaches for anyone who wants to make a deck as simply and quickly as possible.

Using Tools and Templates

■ OriginalCard.com

As a representative example, let's introduce "OriginalCard.com," a service that lets you easily create an original tarot deck online.

It covers playing cards, karuta, and tarot cards, letting you use your own favorite photos or images as the card illustrations to build a completely original card game.

Gift cases are also available, so decks made this way are sometimes given as keepsakes or presents.

To use it, you simply follow the site's steps to upload your chosen artwork or photos and place them into the card frames — a very simple process.

Since everything happens online, you don't need any special applications or technical skill, and because the card size is already fixed, there's no layout work to design either.

Once you're done, you submit the data and the printer handles the checking for you.

Every step after design — printing, cutting, and delivery — is handled entirely by the printer, so it's an easy and reassuring option to leave in someone else's hands.

As a rough price guide, a tarot set costs around ¥5,000.

One key feature is that orders can be placed for as little as a single set, making it a very reasonably priced way to produce your own tarot deck.

For anyone who wants to keep the DIY barrier as low as possible, this is our top recommendation.

OriginalCard.com

■ Printing Mail-Order Shop: Presstalk Direct

For those who want to design their deck more seriously, let's introduce Presstalk Direct, a printing company that offers free templates.

Like the service above, this printer has already fixed the card sizes so there's no layout design needed, but you can choose the card format, size, and paper thickness and type.

• Deck type: Tarot (78 Major + Minor Arcana / 22 Major Arcana only / 56 Minor Arcana only) — choose one
• Card size: six sizes available, from a minimum of 52mm × 88mm up to a maximum of 75mm × 118mm — download the matching template
• Paper: choose from four types — glossy coated paper (180kg / 220kg) or matte paper with a soft texture (180kg / 220kg)
• Optional finishing: rounded corners, gloss coating, and other add-ons are also available

With this many specification options, you can produce a tarot deck that closely matches your own vision and ideal design.

That said, depending on the options and finishing you choose, the price can climb well above the initial estimate, so it's worth getting a quote first.

What's more, when downloading their templates you can also choose which application format you need:

• Adobe: Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop
• Microsoft: Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint

With four application formats to choose from, you can design your deck in whichever software you already use day to day.

Text can also be freely added, so you can style and lay out lettering however you like.

If you want to design both the artwork and the text of your tarot deck yourself, this printer is well worth trying.

Printing Mail-Order Shop: Presstalk Direct

✧Popular Free Stock-Image Sites for Tarot Cards

For anyone who wants to make their own deck but doesn't feel confident in their drawing skill or artistic sense, here are some free stock-image sites that are perfect for the job.

The advantage of free stock images is that you can browse artwork and photos created by professional and amateur artists alike and simply pick the design you like — no extra effort or burden involved.

What's more, after downloading, if you feel the original image needs something extra, you can still edit or customize it yourself, making it possible to produce a tarot deck that's even more to your own taste.

The go-to for free stock art: "Illust/Photo AC"

First and foremost, when it comes to representative free-image sites, it has to be "Illustration/Design/Photo AC."

With so many illustrators contributing, hundreds of styles are available, so you can quickly find artwork or a design that suits your taste.

You can also switch to "Photo AC" within the same AC group, which offers high-quality photography — if you're aiming for a premium-feeling tarot deck, building it from photographs is worth considering too.

The downside is that non-members face a daily download limit, so if you want unrestricted downloads you'll need to register as a paying member.

Illust/Photo AC

For curated high-quality images and vectors: "Freepik"

This site mainly deals in eye-catching, beautiful images and artwork, making it possible to produce a tarot deck with quality close to a commercial product.

You can choose between photos and vector graphics on the same site, so there's no need to hop between different sources.

The vector artwork is also extremely beautiful, and since photo images can lose quality when enlarged, choosing vector graphics — which keep their quality regardless of scaling — is generally the safer choice.

The downside is that this site's terms of use are somewhat strict, and personal use requires that you always credit the source.

So be sure to read the terms carefully before using any image from this site.

Freepik

No membership needed — free, unlimited use: "Pakutaso"

This site deals only in photographic material, but there's no membership required, so you can download immediately upon arriving, and you can use the images freely and repeatedly as many times as you like, making for efficient deck production.

However, since there's no material specifically organized by tarot arcana (only general tarot-themed material), producing individual cards means searching by noun — "Justice," "The Lovers," "The Moon," "The Sun," and so on — one at a time.

You also can't guarantee you'll find a photo with exactly the tone you're after, so this site is very convenient as long as you're not overly particular about design or quality.

Beyond free stock sites, there are also paid image services (such as iStock or Photolibrary), so if you're aiming for a truly high-quality tarot deck, it may be worth checking those out too.

Pakutaso

⚖What to Watch Out for When Posting Your Tarot Cards Online

You may well want to show the tarot deck you made to other people.

When posting to a website, blog, or social media, there are some things to keep in mind about publishing online.

Here are a few points to consider before you post.

Copyright and portrait rights

• If you designed and produced the tarot artwork entirely yourself, copyright belongs to you from the moment of creation, so you're free to post it online responsibly.
• However, if you used a photo of a person, portrait rights come into play — you should get that person's permission before posting, or it's safer to simply avoid posting photos of people altogether.
• Whether you're allowed to post a deck made with free stock images depends on the individual site's rules — some permit it, some prohibit it — so always read the site's terms before posting and make your decision accordingly.
• A tarot deck isn't just the cards themselves — it usually comes with explanatory text or a guidebook. Copying an existing guidebook or a website's explanations word for word, however, is a copyright infringement.

So rather than copying and pasting text from other sites, it's safer to use existing guidebooks only as reference and write your own explanations in your own words.

♡How to Sell Your Tarot Cards Online or In Person

If you'd like other people to actually use the tarot deck you made, selling your own handmade cards is an option too. Seeing your own tarot deck sell can bring a real sense of validation for your taste and design sense, so selling is well worth considering.

There are several ways to go about it — here are a few.

Promote it on your own social media or blog

As long as you've taken care of the online-posting considerations above, promoting your handmade tarot deck on your own social media or website is one option.

That said, handling payment directly carries some risk, so it's wise to use a separate platform for the actual sale and keep your own social media or site purely for promotion.

Outsource it to a marketplace

minne

Japan's largest handmade marketplace, minne charges no monthly fee and lets anyone start selling right away.

The official minne site also offers selling support, so even sellers with no prior sales experience can list items with confidence.

minne

Mercari

Alongside minne, Mercari is one of the largest flea-market services in Japan.

Mercari's key feature is that sellers can transact anonymously, backed by robust support that handles any transaction troubles, so you can list items with peace of mind.

Keep in mind, though, that buyers can also remain anonymous, and some buyers will try to negotiate a lower price.

The biggest advantage of marketplace platforms like minne and Mercari is that payments are handled through the platform itself, so the seller doesn't need to manage incoming payments directly.

Mercari

Bazaars and flea markets

If online transactions aren't your thing and you'd rather sell your tarot deck face to face, using your local area or community is another option.

For example, you could sell at a school or neighborhood-association bazaar, a flea market, a festival stall, or even rent a temporary space at a local shopping mall for a limited-time sale.

Selling at a stall means you'll need to handle customer service, but chatting with customers who are genuinely interested in tarot and fortune-telling is one of the real joys of running a stall.

It can be a valuable experience, so do consider selling in person as well.

Nyanta

Having a deck that's all my own sounds so exciting!

Nekosuke

And while you're working out the design, you naturally come to understand the meaning of each card more deeply too — it's a win-win!

☀Summary

The easiest way to make your own tarot deck is to use an online service.

You can either download a tarot template from a printing company's site and design it yourself, or design the deck directly through a site's own tools and leave all the post-production steps to the printer.

Just remember that using an existing guidebook or a commercially published explanation word for word as your own is a copyright violation, so care and awareness are needed both when designing your deck and when posting it on social media.

And if you'd like other people to enjoy the tarot deck you worked hard to create, consider selling it online or in person.

On platforms like Mercari or minne, anyone can list and sell easily, and if you prefer face-to-face sales, joining a local flea market or bazaar is an option too.

Tarot isn't just for reading fortunes — trying your hand at making a deck can open up a whole new, wonderfully romantic side of the hobby.

Reviewed by

Usatoko WHITE

Professional fortune teller specialising in tarot, oracle and Lenormand reading. Usatoko supervises every divination guide at Luna Factory to keep them accurate and beginner-friendly.

Written by the Luna Factory Editorial Team