Linocut Playing Cards

I've recently been playing with different styles of printmaking, mostly linocut. About two months ago I was looking for a project that had me do enough cutting to get some good practice and I settled on making a deck of playing cards. Since I could conveniently also use it as a Christmas present, this is a 32 card deck which is what my family uses. It's insect and spider themed with all the clubs being moths or butterflies, all the spades being spiders, all the hearts being social animals and all the diamonds being bugs.

This deck was great fun to make. In hindsight, the glossy surface of the blank playing cards I got on Amazon are an awful surface to print on but I made it work. The image below shows the first and last cards I made, I'd say you can see some progress.

I assembled the front faces of the cards with small stamps I made using small pieces of lino and plumber's epoxy for the suit and rank and individually carved insects and spiders for the main motif.

The trickiest part of printing these cards was to keep the cards from sliding on the lino. Because of the small surface area and the glossy surface of the cards, I ended up putting the card on the table and pressing the lino on it like a stamp, rather than the usual process of putting the paper on top of the lino. The picture below shows all the rejects and experiments.

I'm already planning another printing project for when I'm back in London. If you liked this card deck, check back soon for more!