From the Death Card to Learning To Walk Again (Literally)
You can scroll down to read how this journey all began, and yes, it did indeed begin with the Death card from a tarot deck. But don’t worry, nothing scary happened back then in 2021.
Fate saved that for now, in 2026. As I’m typing this, it’s the end of January. I just returned home from a 6 week stay at an inpatient physiotherapy rehab unit - meaning I spent Xmas and New Year’s in hospital 🏥🙃
Rewind to late November’25 and I fell over, breaking my right ankle in three places. A few days later I’m wheeled into surgery and given pins and plates.
A week in recovery and off to physio rehab. 2 weeks into my stay, on the day I was meant to originally go home, I dislocate my left knee. At this point, I have two useless legs.
I’m told to buckle up and get ready for the next month as I’ll be staying for a full 6 weeks.
Armed with my phone and iPad, I kept MoonHaus Studio up and running from my hospital bed.
In between physiotherapy sessions and the endless revolving door of nurses, doctors, specialists, & allied health workers I was able to create new digital products, ship my tarot and oracle deck orders, and reach 41.1k sales….how insane is that?!
one day during lockdown in 2020, I decided to sketch a single tarot card: death.
a simple, stippling, classic aesthetic; a black & white human skull design with some stars. i loved sketching it & i posted it on instagram. i was happy when people seemed to like it. that day, I was asked a handful of times if I was planning on creating a deck.
I said “no, of course not”.
a few days later I designed, sketched, & posted my interpretation of The Wheel of Fortune card. this design was an orobourous, a snake eating it’s tail in a truly symbolic way; showing us that wheels continue to turn and nothing really ends. the orobourous also had some super fluffy, feathery, angel wings. I was asked some more times if I was doing a deck.
I said “maybe, one day”.
the Devil was sketched next. this is one of my most favourite cards as it’s meaning is so universal yet incredibly misunderstood, and also very poignant to me. i gave it a design of a pentagram wearing rams horns. I was asked again if I was going to make a deck.
I said “yes”.
over the next two months I sketched & designed the entire deck by hand and to scale. drawing on tarot card sized pieces of paper isn’t easy. it’s now become my process and while it’s not everyone’s cuppa tea, it’s most definitely mine. i wanted what i was drawing to be something special, not a deck that Hay House or kmart could get a hold of. i wanted a graceful, personal, and deluxe tarot deck.
my exclusive decks have zero digital intervention until the cards are scanned professionally to be sent to the printers. I draw upon my love for human anatomy (I’m also a Division 1 nurse), my fascination & pure adoration for the cosmos & all that’s within it, and how I can never seem to stop thinking of what’s beyond. i also lean into my deeply felt spiritual beliefs and a love of symbolism.
the deck went live on Kickstarter in January ‘21. I had set the funding goal for $5500AU to cover printing costs & I was quite literally terrified that I wouldn’t get funded. however, within 35 minutes of going live it was fully funded. even more amazingly, the pledges just kept coming in. over the next 30 days the campaign backers kept coming in from all over the world.
needless to say, i’d received my kick start.
towards the end of the campaign, a sudden thought struck me ‘what do i need to do next?’. i was going to have to print, import, distribute, & continue to build up the deck’s success. so clearly, i needed a business and some online shops to do that from.
I quickly created a business from which to do all this from, & that’s how The Wandering Moon Co. was born.
the rest is history….
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a brand new chapter: finding a haus:
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in november of 2023, i felt it was the perfect time for a rebranding, renaming, & reclaiming. the business is now known as MoonHaus Studio and i couldn’t be happier with how well it’s been received!
to accompany the tarot decks, oracle decks, major arcana decks, and mini pocket-size decks, i began creating journal pages to help people document their daily readings, tarot cheat sheets so folks would have a quick glance guide, and journals/ebooks for further self introspection & deep inquiry. the printables i create are all original & made from scratch.
what i am most proud of is the numerous chronic pain & illness support journal pages i’ve created. i am disabled with fibromyalgia & i pour much of my time & energy into being an independent artist/creator. making health tracker pages for fellow chronic lifers, hearing their stories, reading their kind reviews, it’s all lent itself to me being utterly in love with what i do!
