card trick – MagicShow.Tips

THE ROCKET Card Fountain – Review

I’ve been using The Rocket Card Fountain for about 9 months now and I still like it.

I have learned recently that with it being 3d printed, it doesn’t handle sitting in the sun with no shade at 108 degrees during a 45 minute show very well. This is a very extreme situation for it to be in and knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn’t use it if I was in that situation again. What happened is that part that holds the cards warped in the heat and no longer holds the poker size playing cards.

I was able to get it to sort of work by putting it back in the sun and then trying to reshape it. However the fix was simply to cut a deck of cards narrow.

Worked like a charm and the cards shoot out just fine! I’m still happy with The Rocket Card Fountain, but it’s good to know it doesn’t handle extreme temperatures very well.

-Louie

Vintage Magic Trick: Fly Cards II by Aldo Columbini

I was playing with Fly Cards II by Aldo Columbini from 1991. I’m not familiar with Fly Cards I, so I can’t compare the two to talk about the improvements that this one has over the original. The effect is similar to an ace assembly, you have four cards with flies on them and a dozen blank cards. You make put 3 blank cards on each card with a fly. The first fly disappears and reappears in the next packet, so that packet now has two flies. Then those disappear and reappear in the third, so that packet now has three. Finally the three flies disappear and you accidentally tap the fourth packet revealing the surprise ending of four smashed flies.

Here’s a demo:

@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick! Fly Cards II by #AldoColumbini #magictrick #magic #sleightofhand #cardmagic #elmsleycount #antiquemagic #louiefoxx #petermaloney #magician ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

What I like about the trick is the progressive assembly, where the flies keep moving to the next packet. What I don’t like is the flies. It’s strange theming, maybe something like honey bees would be better, but then the smashed ending would have to be different as you don’t want to smush honey bees. I think this idea would be interesting in an ace assembly context, however the problem is that I don’t think it would work out as you’re passing off one card as two several times.

It’s a good trick, and I think if someone spent some time thinking of a better theme OR used it as a custom thing for a social media video it’d be useful!

-Louie

Vintage Magic Trick: The Shaggy Dog Tale

Here’s a vintage magic trick from the early 1980’s by Emerson and West. It’s Larry West’s The Shaggy Dog Tale.

Like all the Emerson and West packet tricks, there’s a story line for the trick and the art reflects that. Here’s what the routine looks like:

@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick! Emerson and West's The Shaggy Dog #magictrick #cardtrick #vintage #1980s #magic #shaggydog #emersonandwest #louiefoxx #packettrick ♬ original sound Louie Foxx

Here are the changes I would make to the trick:

Honestly, it’s a trick that’s theming didn’t age well and the trick isn’t that good of a trick without the punchline at the end…which isn’t a great punchline by today’s standards.

-Louie

A Batch of Placeholder!

Yesterday I shipped out a batch of my new trick Placeholder to Hocus-Pocus.com!

Placeholder is a card trick where a selected card turns blank, you can watch a demo of it here:

I have a lot of fun with this trick! You can get it from Hocus-Pocus.com or from me at: https://www.magicshow.tips/placeholder/

-Louie

Performing in Spanish!

One of my biggest regrets is not learning to speak Spanish when I was a teenager. I’m trying, I’m at day 500 on DuoLingo and I can communicate ideas, but not really conversational. I’m always looking for ways to speak it more, especially in the show to hopefully get more confident in speaking Spanish.

That’s where and Emerson and West packet trick comes in!

The trick is Larry West’s Gourmet Mouse. The concept is really simple, it uses three cards and in the trick, one turns blank and one changes. What makes this fun for practicing my Spanish is the trick involves and mouse eating cheese. I know all of those words, and can do the trick in horrible Spanish!

What makes it a great trick is that it shows that I’m trying when I perform close up magic for a Spanish speaking family. It’s really easy to start learning a new language with things like DuoLingo, and there’s no reason for a performer to not know a little bit of another language.

-Louie

The First Ambitious Card

I love magic history, and learning where things I did come from. I’m still working through the JP Vallarino book and got to Vallarino’s Ambitious Card routine.

In it he mentions the first place that the Ambitious Card was publish. It was in a french book called Recueil de Tours de Physique Amusante. That title sounded familiar, so I went to my bookshelf and I have that book!

Unfortunately I can’t read french, so I can’t confirm it’s in there. It was cool to be reminded of a bit of history that lived on my shelf!

-Louie

Gimmicking Post Cards

I do a card trick that I call “choices” where the audience narrows down cards by eliminating them until there is one card left and that matched a prediction that I have made. The overall presentation is about me making bad choices in life, and honestly from a presentation standpoint doesn’t need to be a card trick, it could literally be anything that’s narrowed down.

Since it doesn’t need to be playing cards, I was trying to think of what I could replace them with and decided to use postcards.

You can read more about the postcards on a previous blog post here.

By switching props from jumbo cards to slightly smaller postcards I can add an additional way to show the postcards all to be different. I should note this routine at its bones is essentially Al Koran’s 5 Star Miracle. One of the things that I added to the postcards was to cut them short, so I can do a riffle display to show them all different.

This little bit allows me to show them a bit more freely. The postcards are soo visually different that if I spread them all in a face, I think the repeating pattern would be more obvious than with playing cards.

Now I need to make a choice and figure out if I want to keep the presentation as is, or try to write something new.

-Louie

Placeholder Card Trick

Inspiration comes in some strange places. I was cleaning out my storage closet in the office and found a gimmick that was for an ACAAN that was marketed in the late 1990’s. The trick was garbage, and was about to throw it away when I realized part of the gimmick had potential for a different trick.

Here’s the video I sent to my brainstorming group a while ago:

I like the concept of the card turning blank from a deck that’s in order. It makes it very easy to determine that the selected card is the one that’s blank. I don’t think I’ve seen a trick like this before, where a card turns blank in a deck that’s in order. Usually trick where the selected card turns blank, it’s away from the deck or it happens from a packet, like Gordon Beam’s Limited Edition trick.

I’ve been having fun doing this trick which I call Placeholder.

-Louie

Demi Deck – Review

I bought into the hype and picked up a Demi Deck while I was at Hocus-Pocus in Fresno. Here’s a quick review of it.

First of all, it works exactly how I thought it would work. If you think about it, there’s really only one way it can work. I wasn’t buying it to figure out how it works, but it’s an interesting prop.

Let’s get into actually doing the trick. I was doing it for the groups of people who showed up as I was packing up the show. I would tell them when my next show is and then offer to show them a quick trick and would do the Demi Deck. It got good reactions from the people.

Next there’s the angle issues. It’s pretty solid from the front, I probably personally wouldn’t take this out for a roving gig where I’m going to be surrounded. But for a group of 4 or so people in front of me, the angles are pretty solid.

Now here’s what I like and why I bought this trick. This reminds me of old school Tenyo tricks where the method is frequently more interesting than the trick. It’s just a gimmicky trick that’s fun to do!

Personally this will probably never be in my “paid” close up work. Is it something that I’ll show people who are at my house…yes!

-Louie

Giant Dice Hat Load

A couple weeks ago when I was roving I threw a giant die into my bag. I was going to play with a hat load to produce it. I’ve done hat loads in the past and familiar with many techniques to get the giant die into my hat. I didn’t have a plan for the load, I just used the appropriate technique at the right time and if that opportunity didn’t present itself.

Here’s a highlight reel of some close up and the giant die production is in it:

I don’t know if this is something that I’ll actually add to my show, but it was fun to play with for a few days!

-Louie