After doing my “Face Peel” ending to my card routine, I’m really liking it! People take the card sticker and put it on their phone cases, on their shirts or in this lady’s case, on her purse!
I think it’s a way better souvenir than just handing them a card at the end of your card routine.
-Louie
I still believe in magic clubs and that they are a great way to learn magic and build community. Last night I brought some of the performers (Bri Crabtree, Dennis Forel and Mickey O’Conner) from the fair to the Fresno Magic Club.
Dennis Forel did some amazing stunts with a balloons, which is always my favorite!
And Micky O’Conner did a great bit with a jumbo coin
And we saw some great magic from the club members as well
I highly recommend looking up magic clubs when you travel! It’s also always nice to see what tricks and styles are popular in different areas.
-Louie
Okay, so I tried the Auto Spring Fan Card Revelation with misdirection to flip the fan over. The idea is that they don’t see me turn the fan over, their attention is elsewhere, and when they look back all of the cards have changed.
Here’s sort of what it looks like (it doesn’t work on camera as it’s an open move that’s covered by misdirection):
The reaction it gets has a delay while people notice it at staggered times, so it’s not at punchy as openly flipping the fan over. Reaction wise, it’s say it’s about the same either way, but flipping it covered by misdirection is a stronger magic trick. What’s nice is that it can be done either way and you can choose at the last minute how you are going to do the revelation, you aren’t really locked into one way or the other.
-Louie
When I travel, I usually have a ziploc bag full of things that I can use to make gaffed items or fix broken gaffs.
Yesterday I wrote a blog post about gimmicking an Auto Spring Fan. It’s because of this bag of stuff I was able to start work on making the gimmicked Auto Spring Fan.
I spent some time splitting cards, so that they fan wouldn’t be super thick and glued them over the existing backs of the cards on the fan, and added a flap card
I’m happy to report from a technical standpoint, the trick functions properly. The next step will be to actually try it for an audience!
-Louie
The other day I was at a magic shop in Mesa, AZ and I bought an auto spring fan of cards on a whim. If you don’t know what an Auto Spring Fan is, it’s a packet of cards that pops open into a fan automatically. I thought I was probably just going to have a kid hold them in pictures after the show.
During the drive to the gig, I thought about what else could be done with them. There’s not a lot you can do besides open them. Then I got an idea, they could be used as a card revelation. The idea is the whole fanned deck would turn into the selected card.
I realized that if I held the closed deck face down and fanned them so that I was tightening the spring, I could show the backs of the cards on the edge that’s normally hidden.
This allows me to have all the cards on the back (except for the top card) to have the corner shown when fanned to be the same card. Having the top card change would simply be making a flap card.
…at least that’s how it is in my head. Now to actually make the gimmick, which is the real work!
-Louie
Here’s the highlight reel of my shows at a fair last week!
You’ll notice the peeling off the center of a card trick in there. I’m really liking the trick and starting to think that I don’t necessarily need to custom print anything, and that I can use what currently exists to do the trick. One of the cool things about doing roving at a fair, you can do a trick hundreds of times in a short amount of time. You learn if something works or not very quickly!
-Louie
The trick I’m currently working on is more of a gag. It’s for the end of my ambitious card routine. After the trick is done, I peel off the signed face of the card, leaving a blank card.
Here’s a video of one of the trials of it:
I quickly realized I need to do it backwards, giving them the sticker and leaving me with the blank card!
The full face sticker plays as fun, not strange. Almost like it’s something that you could do with any playing card, but never knew you could. The other version of the trick that I’m doing that leaves the pips behind plays more like a strange thing.
I think either version would be elevated from a bit or gag to an pretty good trick if you did it with a borrowed deck or a deck at the bar. If you added in the sticker card and stole out the duplicate, you’ve got a very memorable moment!
-Louie
After doing the peeling off the face of the face card, leaving only the index on the cards many, many times at the fair, I wondered how it would play with an index card. In Alan Wong’s Card Sticker pack, most of the cards are index cards, so I figured I should try to use them. I stuck one onto a blank face card
It took a few tries to get them lined up correctly, however the nice thing is the Card Sticker’s adhesive is very forgiving! The plan is to simply force this card and at the end, peel off the face.
I don’t think this is really a “trick”, just a fun after moment. I’ll give it a try today at the fair and see how it goes!
-Louie
I got to try out the trick I wrote about yesterday that used Index Only playing cards and Card Stickers where I peel off a piece of the card and give it away. It’s not really a trick, but I think it’s more like what Paul Harris calls a piece of strange. It really wouldn’t fly as a stand alone trick and honestly it is what it is, a sticker on a card. However it has more going for it in a situational context, like none of the other cards peel off, which is what every group I tried it on did…try to peel off another card.
Here’s a video of the first couple of times I tried it:
The thing that I would change is that I should be giving away the sticker and keeping the card. The card is the harder part to replace.
I’m happy with the reactions it’s getting and a great, fun, strange ending to the Ambitious Card!
-Louie
Last month when I was at FISM I picked up the trick Sticker Kicker from Nick Locapo at the Penguin Magic booth, and it sparked an idea. The idea was to do a signed card routine and then at the end, peel off the signed face of the card to for me to keep for my collection, leaving them with a blank face card.
I had a pack of Alan Wong’s Card Stickers, but something was missing.
Then recently I saw that Will Roya put out a deck of cards that are index only cards and that was the next piece to the puzzle for the solution to the trick that I wanted to do.
I realized I could make a card by cutting out the image of the face card of a Card Sticker and put it on the Index Only cards and that gave me what looked like a normal card!
Now if someone marks the card on the image of a face card, I can peel it off and give them their “art” or signature as a souvenir! I’ll try it out today a the fair!
-Louie
