Christmas Mentalism

Here’s a little mentalism trick that’s Christmas themed!

Effect: You show five pictures of Christmas things and someone thinks of one of them. You read their mind and tell them what they’re thinking of.

This is simply a progressive anagram. Using the chart below you say letters, one at a time, and if the letter is in what they are thinking of, you move down the list and if it isn’t you move to the right.

christmas mentalism

The nice think about this list is that you can only get one NO answer before you know the work they’re thinking of.

Personally if I was to do this, I would have an index of the different options, and have a physical prediction, or something like a modified Six Outs by Blake Vogt with only five outs.

-Louie

They Eyes Have it!

A few years ago I had a giant production fish in my show. Shortly after I got the fish, I was recording an episode of the Odd and Offbeat Podcast which I cohost with Matt Baker. We did a story about a fish market that put googly eyes on their fish to make them look fresher (you can listen to it here) and that gave me the idea to put googly eyes on the production fish. It made it look a thousand times better.

Right now I’m working on my show for a school assembly tour and I have a smaller production fish in the show. Here’s what the fish looks like when you order it from the magic shop:

And here’s what the fish looks like after adding the googly eyes:

The eye adds a lot to making the fish look real. It also adds a bit of dimension to the fish. Sometimes its small things that make a huge difference!

-Louie

Winter Solstice Magic Trick

I’ve always said the easiest way to create new things is to use a holiday. Yesterday was the winter solstice and I made a little trick, that’s based on the myth of balancing an egg on end.

I posted it to TikTok and you can follow me there at https://www.tiktok.com/@louiefoxx

@louiefoxx Winter Solstice Coin Balance #solstice #wintersolstice #balance#juggling #magictrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

-Louie

Producing Confetti

One of the things that I really like is using confetti in my show. I think it’s something that makes a lot of tricks “pop”. It’s an interesting challenge to frequently use in a show. It’s not easy to steal as a pack, unless you’re using a snowstorm packet, which is a lot more than I want to use for most tricks.

The closest solution I’d found was Viktor Voitko’s SnowShot:

It’s got some limitations, and I don’t like that the gimmick ends up on the floor after the trick. While it sorta blends in with the confetti, if it’s in the performing area, you will need to pick it up, or kick it out of the way.

Yesterday I hit another solution. A while ago I picked up one of Jay Scott Berry’s FS2 gimmicks from a junk magic bin. I just happened to see it the other day and realized that it would be a perfect confetti holder!

Here’s the trial run:

I don’t know if Jay Scott Berry has used confetti in it or not, but it’s looking like the solution I need for the confetti production I was trying to add to the end of my ball routine!

This discovery for me is a classic case of having routines never being finished AND having your vision of what the trick will look like and constantly trying to achieve that. Sometimes you won’t get there, other times you figure it out quickly and usually for me it’s a years long journey to hit the solution. The key is sticking with it!

-Louie

Esoteric Kennedy AND Washington

Years ago Charlie Frye put out a little gimmick that let you spin a poker chip on your finger tip called Frye’s Chips. Here’s the video of it:

It’s a clever little gimmick that does exactly what’s in the video. I always thought it’d be cool to do it with a coin and not a poker chip. However I think the reason he did it with a poker chip is that it’s easier to gimmick a poker chip than a coin.

The idea has been in my head and a couple months ago I was at Hocus-Pocus digging around in some junk magic bins and found the card and coin for the trick Esoteric Kennedy.

Here’s the demo of Esoteric Kennedy:

The coin from that trick should work for the Frye’s Chips trick. Now I need to make the other half of the gimmick to see if it will actually spin on my finger!

In playing with the Esoteric Kennedy props, I thought that the trick really should be done with a dollar bill, as the coin and card really aren’t connected. I moved the gimmick from the card to a dollar bill:

It looks OK on a video, but I’m going to be 100% honest, the trick isn’t good for actual performance…whether it’s the original version with the card, or my version with the bill. The problem with the trick is that everything is gimmicked and nothing can be examined. You could switch out all of the props, do a Bobo Switch for the coin and top change for the card, but is all that work worth the trick?

I don’t think so…

That said, it’s probably fine for social media.

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

Lasso Card Trick

One of the tricks that I’m planning on doing for the school assembly tour next month is the lasso card trick. Traditionally this trick is done with a force card and a duplicate card, however I’m doing it with a picture that someone from the audience will draw on a jumbo blank card.

I’m also adding a gag to it. The first time I put the rope into the bag, it’s going to bring out a fish! I have one of the small production fish, and I’m not using it’s collapsible properties for this trick, it’s just being used as a fish.

I made a rope that wraps around the fish and will connect to the magnet in the longer rope by the end of the rope. The length of rope that’s around the card has the magnet in the knot. I want to be able to untie the rope from the fish, to hopefully sell that it’s a legit knot for the card.

production fish and lasso card trick

My seam where the two ropes meet isn’t the best, but when done from the stage it shouldn’t be seen.

production fish and lasso card trick

The next challenge was to be able to magnet the fish and not the card. My solution was to have the fish upright in the corner of the bag. I simply made a little holder by using the handles of the paper bag and taping them in place.

magic production fish and lasso card trick

So far this seems to work. We’ll see if it lasts for 75 shows. The good thing is that these loops will be easy to replace!

-Louie

More Work on the Cup and Ball

Sometimes I have ideas and they are works in progress that make slow steps. The Stand Up Cup and Ball routine that I’m working on is still making baby steps towards what will hopefully be a cool routine.

Here’s an early version of the Stand Up Cup and Ball Routine:

What I don’t like about is that I go to the pocket, so that needed to be eliminated. There are also some rules for this routine. It needs to be done solo onstage, done without a table, and my hands don’t openly go into my pockets. I can do steals, use sleeving or things like a topit or holdout.

Here’s the current routine idea I’m playing with:

I’ve eliminated the ball going to the pocket, but I also had to eliminate a phase that I really liked. Where I toss the ball out of the cup, the ball is put in the pocket and it’s immediately reproduced by tossing it out of the cup. If I could come up with a way to vanish the ball without going to the pocket, I could add that phase back in. I haven’t given up on that phase, but it’s not looking good to keep it in.

This trick is a good example of a trick that will probably never be finished. The first version was alright and passible, but not what my vision for the trick is. There’s always things to discover and improve.

-Louie

What’s Next for What’s Next

Sometimes during my morning writing I will explore ideas for tricks like What’s Next that uses the spot card. This is routine where the number of spots on each side keep changing, then there’s a sucker explanation followed by a series of surprises. The prop in that trick resembles a domino and Norm Nielsen made a version of it that has the correct color combination for a domino. Someone else had made a version of one that’s a cookie with the chocolate chips being the spots.

What’s next is a trick that is perfect for trying to theme, you just need to figure out what the spots are. They could be zits on a teenagers face, or my favorite idea I came up with, bullet holes on a road sign. If you’ve driven in the rural USA, seeing a road sign that’s been shot up is common.

It’d should be simple to make this. Just use bullet hole stickers for the spots on the what’s next card, and cover the white board with art that’s a street sign. I’m going to imagine that the gimmick’s black art to hide the magnets would still work with the bullet holes.

If you wanted to do some work, you could do a kicker ending by building a flap card gaff to one side of it to reveal something.

Honestly I’ll probably never use this, so feel free to make one up. Creating things you know aren’t for you is still a good creative excercise!

-Louie

The Third Row and Beyond

When I was at a booking conference last month, one of the acts that I saw was a magician. He did a sponge ball routine where most of the action happened on the table top.

Sponge ball magic trick

What do you notice in the picture?

What I see is an audience that can’t see what’s happening. The back two rows are all leaning trying to see through gaps between the heads of people in the front two rows.

In theory, sponge balls can be done “high”, but in practice it’s a “low” effect. What I mean by that, is you can ask the person to hold the sponge balls at shoulder height, but in reality, that’s not a very natural position. They’re going to hold them at belly or waist height. That takes a lot of the visibility out of the trick.

How can you sponge balls play higher?

I have no idea, I don’t do the trick and when I used to, it was close up, not onstage. The challenge is when they open their hand and the balls are there, they will fall, and that makes if very difficult to the audience to know how many balls are there before they fall.

Another possible solution is to not do close up tricks onstage. I’ve been guilty of that, doing close up tricks that translate to a small parlor audience. The success the close up trick gives you for 20-30 people makes you think it will work for 75 or more, and it really doesn’t.

Watch other performers from the back of the audience and make note of what’s visible and what isn’t. It’ll really help you look at your own show and know what plays beyond the second row!

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – La Petite Mort

On this episode of the Moisture Festival Podcast we are joined by the lovely La Petite Mort. We talk about how being a runway model led her to finding her voice and how that led her to becoming a performance artist.

We talk about what goes into developing her acts and how she curates her own shows to build up the community. We talk about the rave scene and what Gorelesque is. A fun interview with a wonderful person, we hope you love it.

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