I call my own personal deck my House Deck.  

What is a House Deck?  Well, it's a term I use for a deck built with your favorite tarot cards from various decks. 

A House Deck is a bit like a "mix tape".  You take the best of the best and put them all together for an individualized experience.  Just like a mix tape, no two House Decks will be the same.

We talked about this in the last post, but sometimes you just don't like all of the cards in that new deck you just bought.  And that's okay, you don't have to like them all.  It's great when you do, but normally you probably won't.  

So what do you do?

You make a House Deck.  Here's how I made mine: 

1. Gather up all the decks that you only like a certain percentage of the cards.  I think I had around 7 decks, myself. 
2. Then put each deck in chronological order (from Fool to whatever suit you end on).  Make sure each deck is in the same order (you can skip this, but you will be searching for a LONG time). 
3. Then start with the Fool.  Pick out the Fool card out of each deck.  Which one speaks to you the most?  Which one draws you in?  You may like more than one, but pick your ultimate favorite.  You can always change this later and swap them out every so often. 
4. Continue for each card in the deck.   
5. Now, you'll notice your cards are all different sizes, so tap them on the table on one end so the tallest ones stick out.  Use a pencil and lightly mark where those cards stick out.   
6. Get out either some scissors or a paper cutter.  Now you don't want to just go cutting them willy-nilly (now I can just hear some of you "OMG!  You cut Tarot cards?? With scissors?" but I assure you, it's fine).  You'll want to look at the cards and ask "Are there any words that will be cut off?  If so, will it take away from the card?  Will what I cut off destroy the card in any way?"  If so, just pick a different part to cut or just omit that deck all together. 
7. Get to cutting.  You'll want to aim for all the cards to be the same length.  Otherwise, you can't shuffle them properly.   
8. After cutting them, test them out by shuffling.  If they feel a little awkward, that's okay, eventually you'll get used to how they feel.  If one feels particularly bad, see if you need to cut it a little shorter.   
9. Voila!  You now have a House Deck!

Why is this deck better than others?  Because YOU handpicked each card and made the deck yourself, so it's 100% tailored to you and you alone.  This makes it probably the most powerful deck you could ever use.  And what do I mean by powerful, you ask?  

A powerful tarot deck is one that knows you so much that not only will your reading abilities be heightened, but your readings will be easier and flow better than ever.  

You can't buy that kind of power.  But you certainly can make it!  

I think every reader should have a House Deck.  I do have some decks that I read fully by themselves, but my HD is my all-time fav.  I once had a "professional" say "Oh god, what ARE you using?"  If she only knew!!
 My current deck is down to 4 decks at the moment.


 As you can see, they are cut pretty much to the same size :)







Good luck and have fun making yours!!  Feel free to post links to pics of your decks, too!! 

Here is a neat page about cutting your tarot deck HERE.

Here is a GREAT video about how to cut your deck and how to cover the backs so they all are the same HERE.