Earlier in this blog, I discussed the differences in borders between the Clow Cards, Sakura Cards, and Clear Cards. After a bit of trial (ok, a bunch of trail) and slow development, I finally have a working draft for the borders of the cards for my own Clow Sorcery purposes. 

Sun, Moon, Star, and Void

Like Clow Reed, I am most aligned with the Sun, secondarily the Moon, and then least the Star. Thus, the Sun has the topmost position, and the Moon is on the bottom. In final position, the Stars are on either side in the middle. 

One main deviation here is that I decided that the Moon would also be gold colored. Another Clow Sorcerer within the previously mentioned discord used symbolism wherein their Sun is white colored. I am not quite sure how to interpret a golden, harvest-yellow Moon. But, I’m sure there is something relevant to it that I’ll figure out later.  

Other Forms

Those that are familiar with me know that birds also play a large part in my craft. It didn’t feel correct to not have any sign of birds on the borders of my cards. I ended up going with black paired with the sun and white paired with the moon. White seems like it fits with the moon better, and they reminded me of Yue within the Card Captor Sakura show and manga. They seemed a bit more gentle and subtle than black, in any case. 

Within Japanese lore, the Yatagarasu is an 8-span crow that is heavily associated with the Sun. Sometimes they are represented as red. This time I decided to stay with a white and black.

I changed the general shape of the card borders, but that was only out of aesthetic preference. I wanted something that flowed a lot, and was inspired by the borders often seen in the full color spreads in xxxHolic. I ended up looking up border patterns used in Art Nouveau and referenced a small number of posters. 

Colors

I am not currently at a point where I feel confident choosing limited color pallets on my own. Instead, I looked around Pinterest until I found a color pallet I liked, and just took in from there. This is the color set I went with. The source of this pallet is here.

Final Draft

For those that have studied particle physics, I hope you will get the super niche movie reference I made with that subheading. Anyway, this is what I am currently working with as a frame for my own Clow Cards after they have been captured. I wanted to do a re-draw of all my cards to my own preference and ‘flavor’. But, then I quickly realized I needed a background to work with first. 

For those of you who are also members of the Clow Sorcery discord and those that are just fans of Card Captor Sakura, what sort of elements on your card borders would be the same as Clow Reed or Sakura’s? How would they differ?