Tarot Tarts #1: Serpieri Tarot

All artwork pictured in this post is from The Serpieri Tarot, copyright Lo Scarabeo

Happy New Year! December was a far more challenging month than anticipated. I meant to start blogging here again and I just wasn’t able to make it happen.

I’m excited to be starting the new year with a post featuring some of my favorite cards from my new Serpieri Tarot deck, published by Lo Scarabeo earlier this year. I have a growing collection of tarot and divination decks, some for personal use and some for the art. A small but growing number of these fall into the erotic category, and my Serpieri deck is no exception. 

This deck features artwork by and inspired by Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, a graphic artist whose work often prominently displays the female bottom in glorious rounded and muscled form. I have long been a fan of his work and his erotic science fiction graphic novel series featuring the beloved buxom heroine Druuna, who appears throughout the deck as well. 

In my exploration of the deck, I found that many of the cards are in keeping with the Rider-Waite imagery that is most commonly used throughout the tarot world. Decks built from a pre-existing source often include artwork that is not in keeping with traditional imagery or card meaning, so when I found that the images and card meanings were in alignment, I realized that the artwork had been designed specifically for the deck. This is supported in the small manual included with the deck, in which Italian tarot deck publisher Lo Scarabeo explains, “In our interpretation, we took a step away from the original lore of the comics, and imbued the artwork with their own, standalone meanings - ones that fit with the Tarot cards they represent.” 

Here are some of my favorite cards from this deck. Picking my favorites was fun and sexy, so I’ll aim to do this with my other erotic decks as well!

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I snuck a male butt in for fun.

Shopping Tip: The tarot world is experiencing a huge increase in forgeries and fakes. Only purchase decks from reputable sources. This deck is available from Llewellyn.com. (I am in no way affiliated, I just love collecting tarot decks and Llewellyn has been a great source for decks and books for as long as I can remember.)

 

Paddle Portraits

We had our house flood this summer due to a broken pipe. We are still waiting for some of the repairs to be completed on the areas of the house that were damaged, which means that part of the wood shop has had to become storage space for the time being.

We shut the shop down for a few weeks in order to deal with the damage. Then, due to the limited space, Spencer re-opened our paddle shop with a shift in our business model, from craft on demand to a more retail approach, where what you see in our online store is what you will receive. This has allowed Spencer a chance to explore new woods and new designs. Plus, having pieces ready to ship has also allowed more time for custom and special orders.

Being able to re-open the shop while waiting for this house madness to end has probably kept us both sane. 

But now that we are listing individual paddles, I’ve had to step up my photography game. Every listing needs its own pictures showing the paddle in all its unique detail. I tried a standard white backdrop, followed by black, but neither showed off the wood the way I wanted.

I wondered if I could build little sets inside the lightbox that would feature the paddle but also provide texture and color. Fortunately, Spencer was happy to let me give it a try, and so when we  re-opened the shop earlier this fall, we did so with a Fall Collection, with pictures featuring autumnal colors and in some cases, a Halloween theme.

I had a ridiculous amount of fun; it was like the paddles were models at a photoshoot. But one thing I learned with the Fall Collection was that trying to change the set for each individual piece takes forever, so I’ve had to edit myself a bit. 

You’ll see what I mean below. Here are some of the photos I took last weekend for holiday listings and below are some of my favorite Fall Collection photos. And just in case anyone here is a concerned occultist, that’s not a real ouija board, that’s a Halloween placemat I found at Marshall’s!

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Little Red Spanking on Etsy

Begin With the (Rear) End in Mind

That time I got suspended from Twitter for being naughty, or maybe just too fabulous.

TLDR: I deleted my booty pics off Twitter and decided to start blogging again, because I love butts and I love the people who love butts. 

"Begin with the end in mind." At my place of work, it's a philosophy we've adopted after years of playing it by ear and flying by the seats of our pants. It stands for planning, making the right decisions to reach the goal, and always keeping the endgame in mind. 

Today, as the end of Twitter looms loud and clear, I realized I need to begin again in the social media world. But why? What is my goal, my endgame? Why have I tried to be a presence in the online spanking world for over fifteen years? Why do I still want to be a part of anything online, when the Internet is now as much a source of destruction as it is a place of creation? 

So much has changed over these last 15 years. But these things, dear to my heart, remain:

1) Butts. Bums. Tushes. Asses. Arses. Rear ends. Bottoms. Booties. Buttocks. 

2) Spanking butts (and their synonyms). 

3) Self-discovery - I don't just seek to help myself understand myself, but I also want to help others discover themselves, to encourage the world to embrace their own desires, kinks, and, cravings - especially when it comes to butts, and spanking butts. (Please note, I always mean adult consenting butts.)

When I first decided to join the "spank-o-verse," my choices were Blogger, Twitter, and Tumblr. Now there are too many choices, so it made the most sense to follow the advice of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music: "Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start." I began my life in the spank-o-verse with this blog, and so, to this blog I return. Let's start at the very beginning - and let's begin with the end in mind - the rear end, that is!

To be honest, I wasn't  prolific on Twitter. Every now and again I liked to post pictures of my bottom, or retweet fellow spankos, or show off Spencer's latest paddle creations for his Etsy shop. Even still, now that the app is imploding and will likely either be terminated or overrun by cartoon villains, I decided it wasn't the best or safest place for pictures of my butt. 

This morning, I scrolled through my profile and both saved and deleted all the pictures of me. But they can't just not be on the Internet, amirite? So, without further ado about Twitter, here are some of my faves. 

Alive and Well and Paddling!

Hello spankos! Once again it's been awhile. Last you heard from me back in March, Mr. W and I had recently launched Little Red Spanking, our adult spanking paddle shop on Etsy. I wish I'd chronicled the growth of LRS from then to now with blog posts and pics - I have some catching up to do! 

I am incredibly proud of Mr. W and the paddles he crafts. He puts his heart and soul into each piece and I know that is the number one reason the shop is thriving. I want to show off everything he makes! I hope it's okay that I start doing a little bit more of that here.

I must also say - we are so grateful to our fellow spankos in this community! Without this shared passion, a spanking paddle shop would not be possible. We love bringing you the quality and craftsmanship we know you want and deserve - the same we would want from a spanking toy company. This is who we are.

All paddles are handcrafted by Mr. W, aka Spencer Williams, from domestic and exotic hardwoods, finished with body safe and all natural mineral oil and beeswax, and shipped discreetly. See more at Little Red Spanking on Etsy.

#FreePaddleFriday - Poplar Hairbrush Giveaway Starting Today

As promised, I want to include the blogosphere in our #freepaddlefriday promos. You will need a Twitter account. Go to Mr. W's Twitter profile @MrWilliamsTLRW and follow him (because he is amazing) then retweet the above tweet to enter. Winners are announced on Friday night. We ship by USPS so we CAN ship to PO Boxes. We always ship discretely from our LLC. 

Here's the tweet if the pic is hard to read on your device:

New week new #freepaddlefriday! Retweet to enter to win this Poplar Hairbrush paddle. Good Luck! Winner announced Friday. In the meantime, come see the rest of our brat beating bottom burners at littleredspanking.com Happy Spanking! #otk #spanking #paddled #domesticdiscipline

If you do follow us on Twitter, say hello and let us know you're from over here! You can find me at @AbbyW2007. Mr. W and I have found a lovely group of spankos, along with the usual insane outliers you'd expect. We'd be happy to have you! You really can tailor your Twitter experience. I almost never see anything political. I see a lot a lot a lot of butts.

I am looking forward to writing and posting new spanking vignettes and short spanking stories here soon. I am still a bit desperate for time. I work for a small independently owned business and we are scrambling to get our technology in place and our work from home stations set up. The Coronavirus has also caused an uptick in our business (which is a positive, absolutely) but my brain is cooked by the end of the day.

Please do stay tuned, as I think having this blog as a creative outlet is going to be an important part of my sanity once my home office is ready and I stop leaving the house (except to drop packages at the post office for as long as they will let us, Arizona isn't closed yet). This may be our last #freepaddlefriday for a while because of all this, so get in while you can!

Sinful Sundays, Mondays, and So Forth

Sometimes I post #sinfulsunday pics on my Twitter. I didn't post one today, I did a naughty survey - more on that in just a moment - but since I should have been posting them on my blog all along, I thought I'd start getting my blog friends caught up. Here's a candid shot of my tush playing dress-up in my Moulin Rouge panties last month.

I spent too much time today playing with my new Photoshop Express app, but it's letting me make the neatest product photos for our paddles. I love graphic design but my skill level is amateur. This sounds like a product plug, but it's only a plug for our paddles! I'm just having fun with this app and if you have suddenly found yourself with some free time on your hands, it's a good one. I have also been known to add fun filters to pictures of my own butt. Again with the Twitter, but I posted this one just after getting the app a couple weeks ago. Many of you will be seeing this tomorrow morning, so these sentiments are for you!

You may recognize that photo of my butt from the pics I posted yesterday. That brings us back around to the Joker paddle. Mr. W crafts these so beautifully for Little Red Spanking. They're thin, but the two woods we offer this paddle in - Knotty Alder and Walnut - are heavy enough that the weight and density of the wood balances the depth. The smacks are bright and the burn is warm. Just the right length for OTK or any position you so desire.

I'm so proud of the work Mr. W is doing! And I'm pretty proud of these little product promos too!

We run a #freepaddlefriday promo whenever we can. In this time of crisis and homebound spankos, we are considering it more important than ever to get quality handmade implements into the hands of our fellow kinksters. Get yourself a Twitter account if you don't already have one, follow @MrWilliamsTLRW, and retweet his #freepaddlefriday post for the week once it's live. He'll start a new one tomorrow, I'll post it here to remind you and let you know what we'll be giving away.

xoxo Abby