I recently had a very fun opportunity to do tarot card readings at a pop-up renaissance market that was a part of the Ottawa Pops performance A Knight at the Symphony. It was basically a dream come true for a weird D&D- and fantasy-loving kid to grow up and be a part of an actual ren faire, so I wanted to have some fun with my vendor booth. Immediately, I imagined a medieval apothecary-vibed booth, the sort a witch might run, with bones and bottles and weird bits of ephemera.
The challenge was that I found out about the opportunity about five days before the event, so I had almost no time and definitely no budget to pull it together. Fortunately, I’ve been collecting random shit forever for just such an opportunity.
My first stop was my local buy-nothing group. They are an amazing group of people who seem to genuinely enjoy the random things I ask for to satisfy various creative quests. When I asked for animal bones and other oddities one might find at a medieval apothecary, within a day I had met a local theatre prop master with a box of brown bottles with vintage labels and borrowed a stack of bones and animal skeletons from someone’s annual Halloween decoration. One of my best friends came through with my favourite item, some actual deer antlers.
Rooting through various piles of in-progress crafting ideas in my basement, I found some donated fabric and hand-crocheted table cloth (also from the buy-nothing group, many moons ago), a lot of miniature glass bottles, and some sticks. I filled one jar with dried beans and another with plastic eyeballs and a third with random weedy bits from my garden. I rolled up some butcher paper into scrolls and singed the edges then tied it with jute, and wrapped some more jute around a jam jar. Of course there were rocks, and some minerals too. And what apothecary would be complete without a few water-stained old tomes and grimoires?
I have an overhead bar that attaches to my market table and was able to hang my sign from it, and I draped some unused fabric scraps over it to fill in the gaps and cover the edges of the sign, but I thought it was a bit plain. The night before the event, I carved a sun, moon and star stamp and used a table runner from the same donated bag of fabric to make mystic-vibed panels to complete the backdrop. I’ve never been great at cosplay or costumes and spent all my time and effort on decorating the booth, plus it was high summer and high heat that day, so I went with a simple black dress. To my delight, my booth was placed beside a flower vendor making floral crowns, and that was the element I needed to pull my own look into the scene!
I spent zero dollars and only a handful of hours pulling it all together, but I have to admit that I absolutely love how it came together! And I’m particularly pleased that I didn’t resort to spending money on disposable dollar-store plastic crap that would end up either in a landfill or taking up space in storage somewhere.
The event itself was a great success and I met so many lovely folks, some in full renaissance costume and others out for a Saturday stroll. I did dozens of readings, and the story-telling energy was flowing. Thanks so much to the Ottawa Pops for letting me be a part of your pop-up renaissance faire market!
I absolutely love doing tarot readings at large events like this! Whether your event has a spooky vintage vibe or a more quotidian flavour, I can tailor my style to suit your plan. Email me at dani@curiouscrone.ca to discuss how to bring tarot card reading to your party or event!