Cardistry: 3 Questions with Omar Renfro of the Red Stripe Playing Cards

Omar Renfro, 24 is the designer behind the Red Stripe Playing Cards and is based out of Los Angeles. He has been doing cardistry for about 4 years but handled cards for 10 years doing close up magic. Having just released the vibrant deck earlier this week, we caught up with the Omar to have a chat about the inspiration behind Red Stripe, his thoughts on the cardistry community and his favorite decks.

What is your inspiration behind the Red Stripe Playing Cards?
My inspiration behind creating Red Stripe Playing Cards was to make a fully custom deck. I was tired of seeing custom decks come out that only had a custom back design, ace, and joker's. No one ever took it outside the box and played around with the court cards. I took what I knew from doing art and applied it to the other thing I loved, playing cards. I made my own genre of playing cards cardARTistry.

We first saw the Red Stripe Playing Cards on Instagram. What do you think of the cardistry community in terms of the feedback and support that you’ve been getting so far on the social media platform?
People seem to like it now, I think when I first put it on Kickstarter it was a little ahead of it's time, but I think people will appreciate it for what it is now.

Finally, what are your favorite flourish and playing card decks?
Well trying not to be biased and name my own deck, I'd probably say any edition of the virts cards, the cardistry-con 2016 deck, and the Casual Playing card deck.

Red Stripe Playing Cards are printed by Hanson Chien Production Co. and are now available from OmarRenfro.com.