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Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! Tarot Edition.

  • Oct 31, 2025
  • 6 min read

Updated: Nov 6, 2025

In 2024, my barony hosted an event called Memento Mori. One of the A&S competitions at this event was to make three tarot cards based on ANY theme and method of creation. Naturally, I chose embroidery as my method! My inspiration for this project came from my love of “spooky season,” all things green, and the original Beetlejuice film. This has been one of my most technically challenging projects yet! Sure, I've dabbled in stump work, but to do it in multiple layers? Challenge accepted.


Tools and Materials:


  • 26 gauge floral wire (to support stump work)

  • Lime green embroidery cotton fabric

  • Assorted DMC colored embroidery threads 

  • Assortment of 2mm beads

  • Large skull beads

  • Polyfill

  • A cut piece from an old white curtain

  • Red tulle fabric

  • Red satin fabric

  • Embroidery needles (assorted sizes)

  • Green acrylic paint


Definitions:


  • Beadwork - “use of beads in fabric decoration; beads may be individually stitched, applied in threaded lengths, or actually woven into the material, then weft threaded with beads before being woven in (Britannica, 2017).”

  • Stump work - “a style of embroidery that employs different techniques to raise stitches above the canvas, creating three-dimensional embroidery. Stump work embroidery is also called raised embroidery for this reason (EGA, 2022).”

  • Appliqué-  “A cutout decoration fastened to a larger piece of material (Merriam-Webster, 2022).”

  • Satin Stitch-  “An embroidery stitch worked in parallel lines so closely and evenly as to resemble satin(Merriam-Webster, 2024)”


💚The Lovers💚


I chose to represent this card with Barb and Adam. Adam is mainly composed of satin stitches, with some straight and back stitching to create the outline. There is not much to Adam, much like his character. Barb, however, is full of techniques and was my favorite part of all three cards! She is a mix of appliqué (her dress material comes from an old curtain), French knots (the flowers on the dress), and honestly, some weird and unnamed method for the hair. To create the hair, I used three shades of brown thread to give her hair more dimension, depth, and color to better show contrast between shadows and highlights. I tied a knot in the thread to help anchor it, and then came up through the back of the piece with the thread. When I was satisfied with the length, I cut the thread and repeated the process several times until her hair felt full enough. To ensure that her hair wouldn’t fall out if it were tugged from the back, I took a single strand of thread and carefully couched the larger strands in place. I didn’t couch every large strand because I wanted her hair to have movement and feel dynamic, therefore some strands are loose and can move.


Furthermore, Barb’s design also incorporates beadwork for the eyeballs with French knots for the pupils, and stump work for the tongue. To create the tongue, I drew the shape that I wanted on a separate piece of cloth, stitched the 26 gauge wire in place, and created several straight stitches to fill in the tongue. I then cut the tongue from the cloth, being careful not to cut too close to the wire which would ultimately cut the thread holding it in place, and then secured the tongue in her mouth by pushing the small bit of wire that I left bare through the fabric and twisting it in place on the back of the piece. 


The eyeball in the center of the card is crochet! I crocheted a small semi-circle using one of my smallest crochet hooks and 3-4 strands of white embroidery thread, stitched the blood vessels and pupil with red and black thread, and then lightly filled the semi-circle with the smallest bit of Polyfill that would fit inside before stitching the eyeball in place on the card. Finally, I used beads to do a beadwork border on the card. To achieve this, I strung 3-4 beads at a time onto my needle and thread, and couched them in place along the border. 


🙏🏻The High Priestess🙏🏻


I chose Lydia as my High Priestess because of her ability to communicate with the spirits in the house. I decided to depict her red wedding dress specifically because I think it is an iconic fashion piece and the veil gives me the impression of something an ethereal gothic priestess would wear. Her dress is appliqué, using red tulle and red satin fabrics to complete the piece. I made her arms and her bouquet using stump work, mainly because I felt that this piece was too flat and uninteresting. The flowers in the bouquet are French knots. Again, I used beadwork on the border and added larger skull shaped beads to give the piece a little more pop and emphasize the death theme. 


💪Strength💪


I decided to use the iconic Sandworm as the depiction for Strength, but not for the reasons you probably think. The Sandworm itself is strong, yes, but this is a pivotal moment in the film that actually highlights Barb’s strength. Barb exhibits strength by overcoming her fear of the beast and subduing it, riding it back to the house with Adam in tow. 


You may notice that the green background on this card is darker than the rest. Well…that’s because I messed up. You see, I drew all of these cards by hand and in pen. I did not know at the time that I was drawing this card that I would decide to use stump work and elevate the head, which in turn showed the ink drawing underneath. I needed to hide that, so I decided to use a darker green acrylic paint to try to cover up the section that I ended up turning into a stump work piece. I didn’t do the best job with this because by that point, I had already satin stitched the majority of the worm’s body, so I had to be careful about getting too close to the threads with the paint. 


Though most of the worm is satin stitched, I used stump work for the inner worm head and the tongue. These are two separate stump work pieces, joined together on the back of the card by twisting the tails of the wires together. The eyes for both the outer and inner heads are beads, and the inner eyeball includes a tiny French knot for the pupil. This piece actually incorporates A LOT of beads and was an absolute pain in the butt as someone who is new to beadwork and struggles with keeping the lines straight and the beads couched tight. This is an area that I would definitely like to improve. 


Historical tidbits:


Tarot cards can be traced back to 15th century Italy, specifically in the northern cities of Milan, Venice, Florence, and Urbino (Husband, 2016). Tarot was originally a complicated card game that involved trickery, and did not really become associated with the modern practice of fortune telling and the occult until much later on, closer to the 19th century, which has nothing to do with the medieval use of the cards (Husband, 2016). These cards were made with pasteboard and paint, much different from the cards I made, although I opted to embroider instead of paint because of the two, I am less weak in skill when it comes to embroidery. 


Speaking of embroidery, let's talk about one of the historical methods that I employed, stump work. At its peak in the mid-17th century, stump work was a style of raised embroidery that evolved from padded ecclesiastical embroidery, and depicted popular motifs such as the “Stuart monarchs, lions, mythical beasts, exotic flowers, fruit, birds and insects, many of which feature in combination with no regard for scale (Longstaff, 2023).” Stump work is the more modern name for this technique, and it was mainly referred to as raised or embossed work before then.


Another historical technique used is beadwork embroidery. Beadwork can be traced back thousands of years, about 5,000 to be exact, and was used as embellishment on embroidered work, clothing, boxes, pictures, and robes, among other things (Lippin, 2021). Lippin mentions in her article, “The art of hand-beading is derived from skills and techniques that require precision, patience, and consistency (Lippin, 2021).” These are all qualities that I…lack, especially patience. Nonetheless, I appreciate the historical aspects of beadwork and the time and skill that it must have taken for artisans to create such beautiful works. Like the historical use of this technique, I too, chose to use it to simply embellish the rest of the embroidered piece.  


Lessons learned:


  • Beadwork is hard (for me, anyways)

  • Plan your work all the way through, not just the design. This will save you from silly things like painted your embroidery to cover the ink that you used when you should have used pencil….

  • Use pencil when drawing the designs

  • Take your time! I rushed this display so that I could submit it in time for Memento Mori. Jokes on me, it was canceled, and I didn’t give myself the time (or willpower) to re-create my cards.



Sources


Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2017, August 1). Beadwork. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/beadwork


EGA. (2022, April 13). 5 things to know about stumpwork embroidery. Embroiderers’ Guild of America. https://egausa.org/5-things-to-know-about-stumpwork-embroidery/ 


Husband, T. (2016, April 8). Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot Cards - The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metmuseum.org. https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/tarot-2



Longstaff, Emma. (2023, July 17). What is stumpwork? Homes and Antiques. https://www.homesandantiques.com/antiques/what-is-stumpwork





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