When I created the Evaporation trick, I was out on the road performing. I tried many different methods of making liquid disappear, however it was a trip to this Menards hardware store in Minot, ND where it all came together!
Whenever I’m in the area, I always stop and walk through the store. This hardware store has a special place in my heart! It’s what put me on the map as a magic trick creator.
-Louie
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I’m working on a trick where I need to make a postcard disappear from one stack and reappear in another stack. Here’s what I came up with:
The reason I’m going with a gravity flap instead of an elastic flap is that I don’t need a visual change of the card. Also, with gravity, there’s less to break. There’s nothing worse than restringing an elastic flap card has broken right before a show!
-Louie
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In a box of old magic that I bought, there were a couple of Die Boxes without the dies. Here’s one of them:
Instead of throwing them away, I tried to 3d print the die and shell. Here’s what I made:
For the inside of the shell, I used black adhesive fabric. Here’s the everything:
The end result was great and works! I’m glad I could give this prop some more life!
-Louie
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I started using a handheld whiteboard in my show last summer. I never really thought much about it, it’s just a prop I used. Then a couple of weeks ago I saw a picture of me performing with it.
The backside of it looked like garbage. The backside was just cardboard, and it’d gotten dinged up over months of use. I went for a simple fix and just covered the back with some stick on black velvet that I had
It looks way better now! I’m glad I noticed that in the picture, it’s a small thing I could do to make my show look a little bit classier.
-Louie
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In the off season I spend time replacing worn out parts of my show. The fish bowl on the left is the one I’ve used in the show for the last year, and the one one the right is the new one.
It always amazes me how things can get beaten up slowly, and because it happens over time, I don’t notice till it’s really bad. It’s always good to check your props and clean or replace them regularly!
You might not notice the wear, but people do.
-Louie
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Years ago, I wrote down an idea for a variation of an old juggler’s trick. The original trick was to balance a golf ball between two golf clubs, so that it makes a sort of T shape.
My idea was to do it with pool balls and a pool cue. Here’s what it looks like in my garage:
It seems like jugglers aren’t as into changing props for tricks as magicians are. No juggler has done this (as far as I know), and to me it seems like a logical variation of the golf club trick.
I got to try it out at a show the other day and it went great!
I think this is something that I’m going to work more on. The trick is there, now it just needs a routine.
-Louie
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I have a prop that I altered to run off of an ankle switch. I made a simple holder for the straps to hold the magnet and the switch. These are the tops of an old pair of socks that I cut off.
I simply folded them in half upwards to make a little pocket. Then I sewed them to make the pocket hold the magnet or button. Simple solution, however if I keep the prop running this way, I’m going to make a better version.
-Louie
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For my show this summer that I’ll be doing at libraries and summer camps, I wanted to dedicated prop box for it. I found this old RC Cola box at a junk shop. The guy wanted way too much for it, but I talked him down to where it made sense as I didn’t want it as an advertising collectible, I just wanted it as a box.
Once I got the box home I covered it with black fabric, added metal corners and changed the hinges. Here’s what it looks like now:
This was a quick, easy way to make a prop box for the summer magic show. It doesn’t need to last for years, just 3 months!
-Louie
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Another prop for my summer library show is a breakaway flower. This is like the old breakaway wand comedy prop, but it’s flower.
It does have one other bonus bit to it, the top flower separates from the stem. They are attached by a magnet. The idea for the routine will be that the flower is going to disappear. It breaks and it put it back together a few times. Then the flower separates from the stem. I toss the flower in the air and it disappear, but the kids notice it’s stuck to my butt. The flower finally disappears (in a devils hank?) and reappears somewhere else.
Nothing super crazy here, but a way to theme the breakaway wand from a comedy prop that’s added to a routine, to it being one of the main props for the routine.
-Louie
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I’m working on my library show for this summer. The show is going to have a trick for all of the colors of the rainbow. For orange I’m going to use a puppet that will do a card trick. I didn’t like the commercially made goldfish puppets, then I thought of the goldfish cracker. I liked that look and it’s funnier than a puppet that looks like a real goldfish.
Unfortunately no one make a goldfish cracker puppet, so I had to build one. I did find someone on TikTok that had made some, but isn’t currently making them. That meant I had to make my own:
This one is almost done, I need to put the eyes on it. I want to rig it so that one of the eyes will fall off, and I need to figure out how that’s going to happen.
This was my first time making a soft puppet, and it came out OK. It only needs to do about 30 shows this summer and not last for years. In the future I’d probably make it out of a different material that’s not felt. The felt will get fuzzy and “pill” with travel and use.
Overall the prop looks good enough and will get through the shows.
-Louie
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