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
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.
I’m going to be a grumpy old magician today. I get super annoyed when I see posts like this:
The poster bought a trick, which is the easy part, but doesn’t want to do the hard work. People who ask for routines never say what work they’ve done (I’m assuming they haven’t done any). This is why many people don’t think of magic as an art, because magicians constantly demonstrate that they aren’t artists.
Here’s what that person should do to work on a routine for mental dice:
1: Examine the prop:
-What is it…duh it’s a die
-What can it be hidden it to make it look like something different
2: What can the prop do:
-Let’s you know which side of a cube is uppermost
-Since opposites sides of a die add up to 7, it also tells you the lowermost side. This could be applied to any decorated cube, you’ll just have to memorize pairs.
-Can be used as a random selection device (free choice)
With those two things above accomplished, you should have a little bit of a start.
Let’s say you put the die into an alphabet block that has a different letter on each side. That essentially is a die, but instead of numbers, you have letters. Also, each letter is colored, so now you have a choice of letters or colors. That gives you 12 things you can get information about instead of six.
A three-phase routine with the colored alphabet block could look like:
Phase 1: You reveal the uppermost color selected by someone
Phase 2: You reveal the uppermost letter selected by someone
Phase 3: Someone randomly rolls/shakes the block under a cup. They then selected a color from a stack of color swatches and a letter from alphabet cards. Those reveal the lowermost side of the block.
A little bit of work and you can have something unique. Not sure I’d call what I just thought of above as “art,” but it’s a step in that direction.
-Louie
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
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
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
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
A while ago, I made a set of natural shells and then made a silicone mold of them. I used that mold to make a bunch of resin shells for a shell game workshop. One of those resin shells recently got 3d scanned and I’ve started printing them!
These are a great beginner set or set to throw in your backpack to carry around and not beat up a nicer set.
You can find or more or order a set at:
https://www.magicshow.tips/shell-game/
-Louie
Here’s a “touch the screen” style magic trick for Valentine’s Day. You have a list of five words in this order:
Kiss | Heart | Love | Roses
“These are all things that I can give my wife“
They touch one of them and spell that word, JUMPING, one word per letter. They can move back and forth, but once they hit an end (kiss or roses), they must turn around and go the other way.
They do that, and if they follow directions, they will be on either the world Kiss or Love.
Eliminate the word ROSES. What’s left is:
Kiss | Heart | Love
“Valentine’s Day isn’t about exclusion, so we’ll still use roses. Spell that word, jumping one space per letter.“
When they do that, they will be on the word Heart.
Eliminate the word LOVE. What’s left is:
Kiss | Heart
“Spell the name of person you love, jumping one word per letter.”
At this point, they could be on either Kiss or Heart. For this example, they are on Kiss. You call attention to an envelope that’s been on the table the whole time.
“In this envelope is what I gave my wife on our first Valentines Day Together”
This is a multiple out at this point, the envelope has two openings with each option on its own side. You simply remove the matching prediction and the two prediction are:
“Tickets to KISS!”
There you go, a fun magic trick for Valentine’s Day!
-Louie
My favorite playing cards are Old Stock Bicycle Playing Cards from Cincinnati. As I travel I find sealed decks in junk shops and always try to buy them. Sometimes people want way to much for them, but usually I get them for about $2 a deck, and never pay more than $3. Over the years I’ve filled a bin of them!
These decks faro beautifully out of the box! They also last longer than the Bicycle Cards that are currently sold. I don’t use these for shows, they are for practice / play for me. When I have a good deck, I’m more motivated to practice than with a deck that’s inferior.
For shows I use new decks, these are good for about an hour (or one set), which is fine because so many cards will get destroyed in that set that I replace the deck each set.
-Louie
