Tag: magic trick

Vanishing Bottle Routine

A few months ago I picked up Henry Harrius’s Refilled vanishing bottle (Corona version). It’s sat on my desk for a while and recently I read Wayne Dobson‘s vanishing bottle routine and kinda liked the idea. So I sat down and wrote out a routine for it.

The effect is: You have a bag and two bottle caps. One is selected and you remove the matching bottle from the bag! You tell the audience you’ll show them how you did the trick, you have two bottles. You take out the second bottle, then put it back into the bag and you crumple up the bag.

Here’s what I wrote:

Two bottle caps, a red coke one and a blue corona one. You’re going to pick one like this is a low budget remake of the matrix

The red cap, everything is revealed, the blue cap and I and you’ll learn nothing, just like high school.

Hold them in your hands and shake them like you’re playing craps, or the baby won’t stop crying. …clearly you don’t have a baby

Now blow on them for luck like you’re in vegas or a kid in the 1980’s who just wants to play super mario brothers

Toss me one.

Red, the coke bottle cap. Inside the bag I have a Coke BOTTLE!

Since you picked the red cap, that means you get to see inside the illusion. you can never go back, your life will be forever changed like going thru puberty or committing murder.

That turned dark

inside the bag I have a second bottle, so it doesn’t matter which you picked, just like voting.

However if you picked the other cap and we needed to keep the illusion, then we would have done it with only one bottle!

Magic show notes

It’s not the best script ever, but it’s something to get it onstage and in front of an audience.

One thing I noticed is that I think the trick will play better if the vanishing bottle is the Coke bottle. It makes more sense to have that one disappear in the context of explaining the routine. So I just ordered one of those.

I think this routine could be a good lead into my Signed Coin in Bottle. This was published in Vanish Magazine a few years ago.

-Louie

My Favorite Trade Show Trick!

Right now is booking season for the summer of 2025 and I’m going a lot of booking conferences and trade shows. My absolute favorite trick to do at these is my Out For Beers trick.  

This trick leaves buyers with an item that has been magically altered, that they can show people.  More importantly, they trick still works when they bring people over to me who know what will happen in the trick!  

This routine starts with a gag and ends with a trick where picture of a full pitcher of beer empties itself!

Out for Beers is $19 and includes free shipping in the USA!  

If you order Out for Beers anytime in November 2024, I’ll throw in and extra 25 of the empty beer cards!  You don’t need to do anything to get these added to your order, they’ll automatically be included!

Click here to order Out for Beers!

Nickel To Half Dollar by Joe Berg

I was playing with Joe Berg’s Nickel to Half Dollar and it’s an interesting gimmicked coin. Essentially it’s a coin that turns from a nickel into a half dollar. What I like about it is that the coin expands to the larger size. What I don’t like about it is the strange two handed grip you have to have on the nickel and that there are better ways to turn a nickel into a half dollar.

I came up with little transposition routine that uses the coin.

@louiefoxx Easy magic trick! #magictrick #cointrick #magic #nickel #halfdollar #coins #louiefoxx #switch #how #magiciansoftiktok ♬ Money – Pink Floyd

It’s not much, however I think the clean up at the end where I steal the the half shell off of the card is interesting and then allows me to show “both sides” of the Nickel to Half Dollar gimmick.

This is a video only trick, it really wouldn’t play in the real world as the Nickel To Half Dollar isn’t really practical to set and then properly hold with people watching you.

It’s a fun gimmick to play with!

-Louie

Levitations!

There’s a levitation illusion going around, and there’s something I don’t like about it. Before I go any further, the illusion is fine, there’s just a visual thing that I don’t like. If you can get past this, than it’s a great trick.

Here’s the style of levitation, I think the two pics below are different makers.

What I dislike is the cloth wrapped around the person floating. Specifically how it dangles on the end. This is also my issue with most chair suspension routines. The cloth really serves no purpose, aside from hiding the method.

I get that you can justify the cloth as it’s a magic cloth that makes people float…but then why isn’t all of the cloth floating and some of it dangling?

Yes, most levitations of a human have do deal with gravity. In my opinion the dangling of the hair and dress make the illusion look better visually. Where the cloth wrap doesn’t look anywhere are good as the person uncovered.

I understand that it’s not real magic, and you have to make concessions to hide the method. That’s a valid artistic choice, to have a purpose in your show for a levitation and due to venue limitations you need to use a method that you might not like to move the show forward.

Personally for me, I’d save the levitation for a theater where it can be done without the trade off of having to wrap the person with a cloth.

-Louie

Expanding the Stage Linking Pins

This week I started working on routine using some giant safety pins that I came across (read about them here). My initial plan was to see if I could make my close up linking pins routine work on stage with the the giant pins which are about 14 inches long.

The routine works onstage, but it needs more. It’s hard to justify the time it takes to bring someone onstage for a quick trick. I needed to build out the routine and add more.

I think that adding a thumb tie to the trick adds time and texture to the trick. The idea is after my normal linking pin routine, I would add the thumb tie using the giant pins as the “ring” that would normally go on and off my arms.

I’m thinking of using electrical tape for the tie as it’s easy to get almost anywhere. Method wise I’m thinking of using Irv Weiner’s Red Tape thumb tie, as I have all the stuff for it.

We’ll see how it plays onstage…

-Louie

Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte

Here’s a packet trick from the 1980’s that I came across.

nick trost's mexican monte card trick

I think Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte is a pretty solid routine. Here’s me doing the routine and my thought on how to improve it:

It’s really a small change at the end, and I think Nick really nailed it with this one. I’d change the patter, but it’s good and worth checking out if you find one at a magic swap meet!

-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

Money Paddle Idea

magic money paddle

One prop I don’t really like, but spend way too much time thinking about is the Money Paddle. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be.

Is it an olde tyme drink stirrer?

And if it is, how do you give it context for a modern audience?

One thing that it reminds me of is a strop for sharpening blades.

strop

The strop pictured above is probably 18 -24 inches long, where a money paddle is about 6 inches. That’s a small point to give it context. A knife and a strop belong together, so the props are connected.

color changing knives and money paddle

I glued some black and white paper to my money paddle and now the next thing is to try to figure out a routine to do with them.

Also on a side note, the only reason I own a money paddle is that some were made out of wood from Houdini’s house in New York. I thought that was a fun thing to own, but since it see it everyday, I want to figure out something to do with it!

-Louie

Shot Glass Production

I’ve been playing a lot with a shot glass production lately. There’s not much to it, or pretty much any shot glass production. Basically you sneak it into where ever you want to produce it and uncover the shot glass and show it to the audience.

The real challenge is having an airtight seal on your shot glass cover that can still be easily removed. Here’s the idea that I’ve been doing:

@louiefoxx How to cool off instantly! #tequila #drink #magic #tequilashots #nebraska #louiefoxx #magictrick #backstage ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

One of the lesser challenges is what to do with the cover after you’ve removed it from the shot glass. For probably 80% of productions from things like an egg bag, you can simply leave it in the bag. However for a production from something like your shoe, you need to get rid of the cover.

My solution is simple, hide it in plain sight!

This is something that’s working out for me, however I still consider it in the testing phase for me.

-Louie