magic show tips – MagicShow.Tips

More Snake Basket Progress

I’ve got the current version of the snake basket and aside from some potential minor changes, this will be the final version (for now). For context, here’s the first version:

And here’s the new version:

You’ll notice a couple of changes from the original version. The first version was a card trick, and this isn’t. The original ending, with the snake jumping out with the card in its mouth, always felt anticlimactic to me. The ending is the snake jumping out; the card was a lower point than the surprise of the snake jumping out. Using the snake jumping out as the end to close the routine makes more sense to me.

With this no longer a card trick, I could get rid of the card fountain. That’s good, because when the cards shoot out, they need to be picked up. With confetti, it’s just swept up after the show.

I also like that the ending plays bigger than with a card. A card is hard to see clearly what it is from a distance, this will play much further back!

-Louie

Society of American Magicians – By-Laws

This booklet from the Society of American Magicians from 1957 has some interesting stuff inside it.

One of the interesting things was their rules for magic books:

Section C above means all those Ed Harris Jumbo Dollars that teach magic tricks on the back are violations of this section. It also makes giving away any promo that teaches a trick a violation. I don’t know if this is still in their current by-laws, but it highlights how tightly held magic secrets were at one point, compared to now.

-Louie

How Do I Do This?

Here’s a card revelation I found on a hard drive from a January 2024. I’m not sure how I did it.

Here’s what it looks like:

I guess I posted about it here:
https://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/card-production/

It’s kinda cool, I wonder why I stopped playing with it?

-Louie

The Speed Bump That is 6/7

I’m still working on the show I’m doing for a school assembly tour in April. One of the tricks that I had planned is a cards across type effect using postcards. I had a method worked out, then I realized the trick involves counting to ten.

Counting to ten means I’ll have to deal with kids and the 6/7 trend that’s still happening. It’s not as crazy as it was a year ago, but it’s still a thing.

In the past, I’ve used the Piano Card Trick‘s method of pairs to do an object across types of trick. That version has no counting, just moving pairs of cards. That eliminates using the numbers six and seven in sequence.

The downside of using the pair method is that only one thing moves instead of two or three cards. I guess the big plus is that since I’ve used this in shows before, I have a lot of the “bits” built in, so I don’t need to do a lot of figuring out gags. That’s also a bad trap; I shouldn’t be lazy and should be writing new gags.

-Louie
PS If you’re interested in using the piano card trick onstage, look into Jim Steinmeyer’s Apples and Oranges trick.

Charlie Miller Postcard with Autograph

In my collection of magic ephemera there’s a postcard from Charlie Miller to Faucett Ross! There’s a lot of magicians mentioned in it, you can read it below:

I did a little hunting around and found the Hang Ping Chien article that’s mentioned in the postcard. It’s from the April 1975 Genii magazine or page 501 in the Magicana book.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the older style HPC move where you slap the coins on the table. There’s a version in a Gary Ouellette book that’s in the context of a coins through table, where he tosses a coin and I think that looks great!

-Louie

Magic Uncorked – Feb 2026

A couple of nights ago, I went out to see Magic Uncorked in Portland, OR. This show happens every few months at a wine bar called Ora et Labora. It has close-up magic in the bar, then a parlor-style show in the event space.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really get to see any of the close-up magic as I rolled in a bit late. I thought it started at 7 pm, not 6 pm, however Jacob Grier showed me a cool card trick in the hands triumph as everyone was moving from the bar to the event space.

The show is hosted by Dave Gregory, who, along with his wife, owns the wine bar. Dave is a great host, and does a trick to open the show and after intermission.

The first half of the show is done by John Stevens. John does a solid show and one of the highlights for me is the version of 100th Monkey he did! Most of the versions of it that I had previously seen fell flat, but not this one! The only other version I’ve seen was the one Darren Brown did at the Cort Theater on Broadway.

This month’s show had Jonathan Molo as the headliner. I’d briefly met Jonathan somewhere in CA (probably Fresno) a few years ago, so I was excited to see his show. Jonathan puts on a fun, high-energy show. The show’s frame is really his family, which is a super relatable throughline!

One thing I noticed was that both John and Jonathan use handheld microphones rather than headsets. More and more performers are moving away from the headset mics. It takes a bit more skill to use a handheld mic as a magician, however, it allows you to have conversations with people onstage and easily get them mic’d.

-Louie

More Snake Basket Work

I’m still working on my Snake Basket Magic Routine. The basket won’t be a basket; it will be a box. I’ve written on this blog before about why I’m not using a basket for the snake. I want the box to look like a shipping crate, but it also must be light and pack as small as possible. I started with a cardboard frame with gaff tape hinges.

I then covered the middles of the panels with wood patterned contact paper.

Finally I did the corners with a wood patterned duct tape to give it the crate look.

This gave me the look that I was going for without the weight of wood, and it packs flat!

-Louie

Portland Magic Jam

The Portland Magic Jam in Portland, OR, is coming up, and it’s got a great lineup!

I just found out that I’ll be performing in the Friday night show! I’ll also have a dealer table with some vintage magic, as well as some of the magic tricks that I make.

You can register at https://pdxmagicjam.com/ They also have an amazing refund policy if you can’t make it, so register now if you’re on the fence about going!

-Louie

Talking To Strangers – Magic Podcast

The magic review site Magic Orthodoxy has a blog about getting started performing magic for people you don’t know. It’s called Talking to Strangers and I was a guest on it!

You can listen to my episode on Spotify at: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nX5NWXTQ2TmoX52uyPjhj
and you can watch it here:

Hope you learn something from my past experiences!

-Louie

Dice Force

For a show I’m doing in a couple of months, I needed a way to force a number (really a position in a row of things). I didn’t want to use the Hot Rod Force, and my normal default is the Quinta Force, but I wanted to try to figure out something new.

My idea was to put a die in a film can and have someone shake it, and that would force the number.

First of all, I didn’t want to use a die that’s missing a number, and you eliminate numbers as they’re rolled. I’ve seen too many shows where that method is used, and it takes forever to get the last item eliminated, as that number just doesn’t come up.

Other methods I didn’t want was to use a die that’s all the same number or a magnetic die. My goal was to try to come up with a NEW method before I resorted to old methods. Even if I don’t use the method I came up with, it’s fun to try.

Here’s what I came up with:

I think this method had potential. Is it a lot of work to accomplish what a magnetic die could do? Yep.
Is the method interesting? Yep!

-Louie