Tarot Deck Box and Booklet: What Goes Around the Cards

How can I create my own tarot deck?

By making four printed objects, not one. Creators almost always plan the first and discover the other three late, usually at the point where they have a printing quote in front of them.

All four are included in the standard set price — $15.90 a complete deck at the 12-deck minimum covers 78 laminated cards, the 48-page booklet and a standard folding box. You are not paying extra for the box and the booklet; you are being asked to design them.

That is the work most first decks underestimate. Seventy-eight illustrations is the visible part. A booklet is a book, a box is a piece of structural packaging, and a card back is the one image a buyer sees seventy-eight times.

Can I make my own tarot cards?

Yes — and the part that catches people is not the cards. It is the booklet, because a booklet is a fixed number of pages and text is not.

The standard booklet is 48 pages including its covers, so 46 pages are yours. A booklet page is the same size as a card: 70 × 120 mm finished, on the same 74 × 124 mm canvas with the same 2 mm bleed. At 8 mm margins and a 9 pt type size on 12 pt leading — readable, not generous — a page of that size holds roughly 110 words.

Divide it out and the deck’s voice has a budget: 46 pages × 110 words ÷ 78 cards is about 65 words a card, and that is before you spend a page on a title, a page on contents, two on how to read a spread and one on a colophon. Spend eight pages that way and you are at 54 words a card.

Sixty-odd words is one short paragraph. It is enough for an upright meaning, a reversed meaning and one line of your own voice — and it is not enough for an essay on each card. Decide which of those you are writing before you start, because the two decisions produce different books. If you want the long version, say so when you ask for a price: a different booklet is a different specification and carries its own confirmed figure rather than being assumed into the standard set.

The free kit includes a clean 48-page booklet file at the correct size, plus a front-cover and inside-back example, so you can pour text into the real page and see the budget for yourself rather than trusting the arithmetic above.

How can I print my own card deck?

Choose the box first, because the two constructions are not interchangeable and the artwork is laid out differently for each.

The folding box is one flat sheet, cut and creased, that folds into a single carton with a tuck flap. It is the box included in the standard set price. One dieline, one panel map, one piece of artwork to lay out. It is the right choice for almost every first deck: it costs nothing extra, it ships well, and there is only one thing to get wrong.

The lid and base is two separate parts, each with its own source file and its own panel map. It is a heavier, gift-shelf object, and it doubles the layout work: the lid and the base have different proportions, and a design stretched from one to the other will not sit where you expect. The templates state this in so many words — never create one part by scaling the other.

Whichever you pick, the mechanics are the same and the free kit gives you all of it: an exact panel map that ties each numbered face on the assembled box to one verified panel on the flat sheet, a working overlay you position your artwork against, and an unchanged reference dieline you send back with your clean artwork. Extend your background through the 2 mm bleed band around every verified cut, and keep logos and text inside the 4 mm safe region. Hide the overlay before you export, and never guess the meaning of a technical line because of its colour — preserve it as it is.

How to get your own tarot deck printed?

Have four things decided before you ask anyone for a price, because all four change the number: the card count and size, the box construction, whether the booklet is the standard 48 pages, and the lamination. The standard set answers all four — 78 cards at 70 × 120 mm, a folding box, a 48-page booklet and thin 30-micron lamination in matte or gloss at the same price — and a deck that matches it is quoted off the published ladder rather than as a special.

If the box or the booklet is the part you cannot do yourself, that is a service and it has a published price rather than a conversation. Print-ready files and minor logo, company-name or QR-code edits are free. Below 60 decks:

You pay only for what you select, and a layout service is not the same as a printed component: having the booklet laid out for you does not make the printed booklet free, and it is already inside the set price anyway. New illustration or extensive reconstruction is a different job and is agreed separately.

After that the order sequence takes over, and it is set out step by step in the self-publishing checklist rather than repeated here; the quantity and price comparison is in the printing cost guide. The one point worth carrying into your packaging decision is that the box and booklet artwork is confirmed with you before production starts, so a layout you are unsure about gets reviewed rather than printed.

What is the standard size of a tarot card bag?

Worth separating, because two different things get called packaging. A bag or a pouch is a reading accessory a person buys to carry a deck they already own. A box is the printed packaging your print run arrives in, and it is the one you have to design.

There is no industry standard bag dimension, because bags are cut to hold a deck rather than a specification. What is fixed is the deck: a standard tarot card finishes at 70 × 120 mm (2.76 × 4.72 in), and a 78-card laminated stack plus a 48-page booklet is what any bag or box has to swallow. Measure the finished deck in its box and add room to get it out again, rather than working from a published bag size — lamination thickness and booklet page count both change the stack.

If you are producing a deck to sell, the decision that matters is the box, not the bag. Bags are a separate accessory purchase, and on this shop they are sold as their own products rather than bundled into a print run. The compact card format — 50 × 90 mm finished on a 54 × 94 mm canvas — is the other size we print, and it changes every packaging dimension with it.

Decide the packaging before you finish the art

Three decisions cost almost nothing early and a great deal late. The box construction, because the lid-and-base layout is a different job from the folding one. The booklet length, because 46 inside pages is a real constraint on how you write about 78 cards. And the card back, because it is the only image that repeats 78 times and it is the one most often left until last.

Everything you need to make those three decisions concretely — the clean production files, the working overlays, the unchanged box dielines and the 48-page booklet template — is free to download on the file guide and templates page. The exact canvas, bleed and safe-area numbers behind those templates are set out in the card size and template guide. Open the box map and the booklet page at their real size before you commit to a layout.

When the four components are decided, plan your own-artwork tarot print run from 12 decks. If you would rather put your brand on an existing 78-card design and skip the illustration work entirely, that route is here. Comparing suppliers first? Where to get tarot cards printed puts eight of them side by side.