Cactus Playing Cards - The First Deck!

Magic and art have always been a part of my life. When I started collecting playing cards at a young age, the idea of making my own deck of cards excited me. I have many different drawings of custom playing cards I wanted to make, but I never had the resources to bring any of these ideas to life.

Enter Kickstarter

After helping to fund a handful of decks over a couple years, I decided it was my turn to give it a try. I took some time in 2019 to create the first renditions of the soon-to-be Cactus Desert Casino playing cards. Even with such a simple design, it was important to me that it look the best it can. You'd be surprised how hard it was to make the cactus icon not look like it was giving you the bird. In reality the Saguaro cactus is a really big "F-YOU" to the desert. Standing tall and strong for hundreds of years, with no signs of giving up. I took inspiration from that and kept pushing forward with my idea, with not intentions of stopping.

Before this, I had never created and product to sell or even thought about working with a manufacturer. I had no plan, other than to make this deck a reality! After asking around the community for advice and contacting the United States Playing Card Company I had the beginnings of the project laid out.

The expectation that this project would fully fund war nonexistent. I knew what I was doing had a slim chance of happening, but I pushed forward. In late February the campaign, simply titled Cactus Playing Cards, was launched!

Within five days the project was 50% funded! But the project still had a little under a month to go...and if you know anything about Kickstarter campaigns, the numbers don't always stay steady. It was a long project for sure, but with less than a week left, we hit the funding goal and even raised $1,000 more than needed!

COVID-19

After all the hype of getting my first deck of playing cards came the uncertainty with of the outbreak of Covid-19. The USPCC had a shelter in place order, which put a delay on all their production. It wasn't till about two months later in May, that they would reopen and all production would slowly start moving. Over the next month I was able to send in the project files, get proofing done and get everything in place to get production started.

 In June I received the hard proofs of the deck, and I was excited! Having those made this project more real than before. All I needed at that point was to go over them myself and approve all the artwork. After I did that, the cards were sent into production.

Fulfillment

The original delivery period for this project was June, but I had only just approved the artwork. Luckily I had keep all the backers up to date as the timeline stretched out. I never heard any complaints from anyone as I'm sure everyone was trying to wrap their heads around what was happening around them.

By early August the cards were finally sent to production! It was a long couple months for sure, just waiting for them to arrive at my doorstep. After they were sent to the printers, it wasn't long until I finally had the decks in hand! It had been six months since I started the campaign and at the end of August I was ready to start shipping them out!

Other than selling items on eBay, I didn't have experience with a major shipping project. Taking this one was a big task and I did make a few mistakes, but by mid September I had the 200+ packages everything shipped out!

Thoughts

At the time of writing this, I have raised over $30,000 to make my custom decks. It is only possible because of all the individuals that either, liked my work or believed in me. There are many things I would change with that first deck if I were to do it again, but that is what I did with all the decks that followed it. I learned what did and didn't work and I tried new things with each design.

The creative process is an ever evolving thing. There is no end to what we can create and attain if we simply continue to try.

For those of you who read this all the way through, thank you! It was fun to relive this and share how the first deck came to be. If you're interested in getting your hands on a deck or two, below is a coupon code for $5 off an order of Cactus Playing Cards!

Use code BLOG5 at checkout for that free $5!