A coupon code to make your own card decks.

A printing site called ArtsCow is running a great deal on custom card decks, and the BoardGameGeek forums are all over it. I heard about it via a random email from someone in Spain (I think) who wants my card files for Fatal Frame: the Card Game so he can create his own set via this deal.

I actually get a lot of requests similar to that. I also get pleas to release the source files so people can translate the games to their native language.

I usually deny (or ignore) these requests, unfortunately. I just don't have the time to go back and dig through all the Photoshop files to re-export over a hundred Talespin: the Card Game blanks, much as I may like to spread the game around the world. Anybody who is deadset to customize Fatal Frame into Portuguese is just going to have to go the ol' WordPaint route and cover the cards with ugly blanking boxes.

The ArtsCow deal gets you a fully customized 54 card deck for $5.88, free shipping. And I mean fully customized. 54 different fronts, on one shared back. Obviously the idea is to make a custom poker deck with 54 images of your kids and dog, but once you turn off the automatic poker suits on each card template, the sky's the limit for Board Game Geeks like me.

I mean, jesus.

So I went to my Fatal Frame PDF folder, where I have individual PDFs of every card. Since upgrading my original low-quality TaleSpin layouts some time last century, all my future designs pretty much go from 400 dpi Photoshop to a 1000 pixel PDF for each card, to a bigger PDF that contains a whole pile of printable cards. So I thanked my past self for saving out these individual PDFs. As I intimated earlier, the original Photoshops are a mess of layers, old text and false starts. So my PDFs are the way to go. I set up a Photoshop action that saved each PDF as a big jpeg, because that's what the ArtsCow graphic editor wants.

It also requires Silverlight, which is totally gross.

Small problem. Assuming that I'd never have to prepare these card designs for professional printing, I originally built them as 2.5 inch by 3.5 inch with no allowance for bleed. I mean, you cut them out by hand and fit them into sleeves; no real need for normal pro printing caveats and alignment tricks.

ArtsCow's editor has you covered, more or less. Once I uploaded all of the images (which, in Fatal Frame's case, was over 100 files), I could shrink the jpeg inside the card template, creating a nice border... just so none of my card text gets uncomfortably close to the card edge. You can even choose a color for the border. Naturally, resizing all of those cards took some time. But I did it, 'cause I'm super cool. ( <-- Res Dogs ref)

At the bare minimum, coming up with a complete set of Fatal Frame cards (including the correct number of duplicate cards) would be under three 54-card decks. But I'm picky and wanted to do different card backs... so the draw deck would have a different back from the location deck, etc. So I had to space it out to four decks, but there was enough leftover space in there to accommodate multiple runs of the same cards... so I ended up placing an order for six custom decks, which is enough for two complete sets of Fatal Frame, an overrun of some card subsets (another three decks and I'll have four full sets), and some test cards and extra duplicates.

Of course, this means I had to quick design some card backs. That's something else I never counted on.

Bad news for my friends in the European Union and elsewhere around the world: there seems to be no way to share my ArtsCow image album(s) with other people. So I can't just easily allow other people to snap up Fatal Frame decks based on the ArtsCow formatting I have already set up. If I had correctly prepared the jpegs in the first place - with proper bleed - then I could just dump the images somewhere and let people go to it. I suppose I could just present the jpegs I do have and let anyone who is sufficiently motivated grab them and build their own ArtsCow albums.

The normal price is $15 per deck. The coupon code CARDS388 gets you the $5.88/free shipping deal. Counting those savings plus wiping out the egregious shipping price, I saved over $70 on my $35 order.

Oh, and if you're a new account, you get a ton of store credit on just about every sillyass thing they can print for you.

The code is good until March 15, so if I'm really pleased with my Fatal Frame job, you can bet I'll go order more. Heck, if the final result is as nice as people are saying, I'll be back for custom decks at the usual price. I'll be sure to report back on this one, because if it is as cool as I'm hoping, I'm going to be on cloud nine for a while.