For those of you who read my very first blog post, I mentioned that this idea pretty much stemmed from a need to index the mandalas I was drawing. At the time, I was designing mandalas for a friend in the US for use in a women’s group, and because I was coming up with so many new mandalas, I wanted to index them in a way where I could refer to them later and develop them further, for my own purposes.
I’ve always liked to dedicate a sketchbook or a new notebook to a certain task. In this case, I needed to index my designs, so I needed index cards. I had purchased some nice card stock recently for another project (which I quickly shelved to focus on this new project!) so I decided to use that. The card was larger than I needed, so I cut it down to size and rounded my corners to make the cards look special. The card wasn’t as thick as I would have liked, but for the purpose of simple indexing, it would do just fine.
I began drawing my designs. Only small 3.5″ designs. On each card, I had space underneath each mandala for notes. As I drew a few cards, I began to toy with the idea of popping a focus word under the mandala, and then it dawned on me that the cards would look great as an oracle deck! Instead of just a regular index system, I would make myself a little oracle deck! Something I could use on a daily basis, and at the same time, be inspired to draw more mandalas. This idea quickly became my new primary focus. However, I currently work a full time job, so time spent on my new project would be limited. Most days off are filled with appointments and errands for my family, so work on the cards would be minimal. But I decided that there was no hurry to finish the card deck. It’s something I wanted to look forward to working on, and if it meant having to wait until other priorities were done, then that was ok.
In the past, many people had commented on how they enjoyed my mandalas. The ones I created for my friend in the US were circulated among many women who enjoyed colouring them in and meditating on the focus words drawn within the mandalas. They found them inspiring to raw their own mandalas and they often showed me their own creations. My mandalas were essentially being used as a tool for self healing and this actually didn’t occur to me at the time I was producing them. Oddly, when people had previously told me that I was naturally meant to ‘heal’ people, I had no idea how I was supposed to go about this. It was towards the end of last year (2018) that I finally figured out that it was my mandalas that were my tool for helping heal others! I then realised that my little personal oracle deck should then be expanded to be an oracle deck for the enjoyment and healing of others as well. And that is where this journey began.
The two cards pictured above are the first two cards I designed. Since then I have designed around 15 cards, and after taking a course on how to create and publish my own oracle deck, I have learned that there are MANY things I need to adjust in order for this to work. In my next blog post, I’ll take you a little further on my journey as I create my folio of designs and learn more about the process of producing an oracle deck. As stated in my first post, this is a whole new ball game for me. I am learning how to do this as I go, so you guys are going to see the ups and downs of this rollercoaster ride. I would love for you all to see the end result. I’m excited! And I hope you are too!
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