New Art For A Wonderful Winterland

©2025 James Battersby and Christine Aguiar.

The Sun Card from Waite’s Wonderful Winterland. We’ve designed two border themes for the deck; one features a checkered border and the other features an ivy border.

Over the Christmas / New Years period we’ve finished a few more artworks for the deck. If you’re reading this and just hearing about the deck for the first time, I’ll fill you in on what the deck is about, when to expect it and where to get it.

Waite’s Wonderful Winterland is our latest winter themed deck of cards. Inspired by MacKenzie Childs’ Christmas ornaments, Christine, co-creator and main designer of the cards, thought creating a winter themed deck based around those particular decoration designs would look really great as a Tarot deck.

This is a set of cards we’re currently still working on, having been successfully funded on Kickstarter. Our original goal was to get it out to backers by January, but i think that was probably a bit optimistic. We still have roughly around 18 cards still to create, and naturally the temptation is to rush it to meet the deadline, but we’ve always felt that it’s more important to deliver a quality product, first and foremost. We want backers to dig out Waite’s Wonderful Winterland from their collection five, even ten years from now, over the festive holidays and be in love with the deck all over again. At the same time we understand the importance of getting it finished in a timely manner. Rest assured that we’re working on the deck virtually everyday (However we took a little break on Christmas and Boxing Day).

©2025 James Battersby and Christine Aguiar.

We hate watermarks through artwork probably more than you do, but sadly it is a necessity in current times. Counterfeiters, no doubt, will eventually get a hold of the images one way or another, but we make attempts to make it less easy! I mean, let us print the deck first!

As mentioned, we’re a little behind schedule, so we worked through New Years Eve/Day to try to get caught up. Call me superstitious but I hope actively working on a project as the clock strikes midnight while the rest of the world is bringing in the new year, will be a great start to my year.

So that’s a little about the inspiration behind the project, and when to expect it (hopefully early 2026), but where to purchase it after the campaign? Currently we don’t sell via Etsy anymore, or eBay for that matter, due to continual rising costs imposed upon sellers, so we tend to focus more on our website. Sometimes we will have resellers also, who sell our genuine products. If in doubt just ask!

As I currently write this, it is snowing outside. Sometimes we get snow in Northern Ireland at this time of year, sometimes we don’t.

It has been a real pleasure working on these illustrations for the Winterland deck. Christine designs what the costumes should look like and so it is nice to see each new design for the first time. I think you’ll agree, the patterns are beautiful, showing the characters in a different kind of light.

©2025 James Battersby and Christine Aguiar.

The Wheel of Fortune and the 3 of Wands, two of our latest cards produced for the project.

Waite’s Wonderful Winterland will be our 6th (I think) Winter themed deck, and it has become almost a bit of a tradition for us to create snow themed Christmas Tarot card sets. It all began in 2018 with our first “Winter Waite”, which was then followed with a bit of a more revised version the following year (which has come to be known as the “Winter Waite 2019” edition). This was followed up with a glittery edition, which we’ve come to call the “Glitter Waite” even though it is the 2019 Winter Waite with glitter…same deck, yes, but with glitter. Then we created Winter Waite: Santa’s Helpers, which takes a bit of a departure from the previous versions of Winter Waite, and takes on a more candy cane, whimsical look. It has been described as a more “light hearted” or “fun” deck. Each deck, I feel, almost has its own “aura”, its own vibe.

After the Santa’s Helpers Tarot, we revisited the Winter Waite once again. Called Winter Waite: Redux, this particular printing was in standard form and also a version that has stars. We’ve had a few attempts at re-producing the currently sold out “Glitter Waite” on and off over the years, but it is very difficult and very costly to make it happen. There is a lot of precision in getting it right and not every printer is capable. So if you own one of our Winter Waite: Glitter Edition decks, take care of it! lol I honestly can’t say for sure if we will ever be able to create another. It may have been a lucky fluke!

Getting back to Waite’s Wonderful Winterland, we’re continually working on this deck and hope to have it finished fairly soon.

Thanks for reading

James