Tricks – Page 26 – MagicShow.Tips

Breakaway Flower

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
Click here to learn more about building your own magic props!

Goldfish Cracker Puppet

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
Click here to learn more about building your own magic props!

Library Magic Show

This year I’m a bit late working on my library magic show. Normally I’d have it written out and have most of the props built. This year I’m just getting to the brainstorming stage. My show is going to have a trick for each color of the rainbow.

Here’s some of my initial brainstorming notes:

One thing I noticed once I started brainstorming was that a lot of things that I associated with colors were food. I don’t want the whole show to be about food, so I had to think harder and now only about half the show is about food!

The other challenge is to vary the magical effects in the show. I noticed that I had a lot of tricks that were productions, but the show can’t just be all things appearing. I added a card trick, a transformation (actually two) and a transposition. Hopefully that will provide enough variation of magic effect in the show.

-Louie

Coin to Key Chain!

I’ve been doing a coin to key chain for a while now and I love it! The effect is you show your lucky coin that’s permanently embedded in a fob. Then another coin is signed and reappears as your lucky coin that’s permanently embedded in your key chain!

The lucky coin could be given out in its holder as a souvenir!

What I love about this trick is that it lives on my keychain, all I need to do is borrow a marker! I’ll probably make a batch of these at some point and offer them for sale.

-Louie

The Original Jerry Benson Dancing Stick!

This just popped up in a magic sales group, it’s THE ORIGINAL JERRY BENSON DANCING STICK that was put out by Peter Pit.

The Original Jerry Benson lived in Seattle and I met him when I was a teenager. He was a barber that did magic! His legacy in magic is largely forgotten, but he’s the guy that turned the floating cane into the dancing cane!

He was a cool guy!

-Louie

Playing, not Learning or Practicing

The last couple of months I’ve have a huge output of original (to me) magic effects. The shift is that I’m playing with magic more, and in a directed way. Playing is different than learning a new trick or practicing one that I already do.

When I play with magic, I put a prop on the table and have recess with it. I just start playing, and sometimes an idea will pop into my head and I’ll have to figure out how to make it happen. Other times I’ll just play and come up with nothing new. However that play where I come up with nothing new is still flexing the creative muscle in my brain. I’m also working through my vocabulary of sleights or techniques. The goal is to move past what I know. For example, if I have a packet of cards in front of me, I want to get past doing twisting the aces. However sometimes that means working through all the ways I know how to do it to come up with an different angle on it. Or to figure out what I don’t like about the effect and try to fix that.

It’s been a lot of fun dedicating time to play. I think more magicians should do this!

-Louie

Magician vs Parrot

With social media eating up content, I’m always looking for things that aren’t from my show to use. I personally don’t want to burn material from my show on social media. Recently when I was in Cartagena, Columbia there was a parrot at the port, so I did a trick for it:

@louiefoxx Magician vs Parrot! #magictrick #parrot #magic #parrotsoftiktok #cardtrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

It’s not the best trick in the world, but it was easy content to create and fun. More importantly, it’s not my act, so I’m not burning material.

Also, this parrot was kind of a card trick master. I put the shuffled deck down and he flipped over the four aces right away. I wish we had recorded that, but it wasn’t planned and caught us off guard!

Keep an eye out for fun moments that you can use for social media videos!

-Louie

Another Simms Vanishing Birdcage!

A few weeks ago before I went out of town I bought a Vanishing Birdcage and it arrived right after I left town. Now that I’m home, I got to open it up and check it out.

As I thought, it’s a Warren Simms vanishing birdcage!

It’s got the “S” stamped on it and the “H” means that it was made for Max Holden’s magic shop. I’ve now got two Simms vanishing bird cages in my collection.

This is my other one that was made for Tannens”

I’m glad to have both of these in my vanishing bird cage collection!!

-Louie

Working With Other Magicians!

Last month when I was travelling to a ship to perform for a week, I noticed on their app I could see the schedule. It turned out there was another magician performing the same week that I was, and that magician was David Williamson!

It’s kinds stressful heading out to a gig where you’re working with one of your favorite magician and one that’s in almost every magician’s top ten magicians. The silver lining to that stress is that I get to hang out with him!

I’ve seen his show before on a cruise ship back in the mid 2010’s when I was on vacation with my family. He does a solid show with classic Williamson energy, I love his stage persona, it’s great!

If you get a chance to see his show, do it…and if you get a chance to work with him, do it!

-Louie

Mike Bornstein’s Money Magic!

In the 1980’s and 1990’s Mike Bornstein had ads in magic magazines for his money magic. I found a set of his lecture notes and have been going through them. One of the tricks that I though was interesting was this torn and restored bill:

@louiefoxx The old hundred dollar magic trick! #magictrick #magic #magician #moneymagic #vintagemagictrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

While the method now is fairly standard for torn and restored things, what makes his interesting is the tearing sequence. It’s backwards from how most are done. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse, but different!

Finding unexpected things is one the fun thing about all these old lecture notes!

-Louie