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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
Last week I was doing roving magic at a fair. When I do this, I do either a street show, or close up magic, depending on which I think will get better results. The fair I was as had my times scheduled and my 1pm timeslot wasn’t the best for trying to do a street show as it was slower at the fair and there wasn’t really any shade. For those shows I did close up magic and went to the people who were in spaces more conducive to watching magic.
Here’s the props for my close up set:
And here’s what everything is:
The nut is actually over 2 inches across, hole is 1 1/2 inches. I bought the nut on a whim, and put it into my pocket and figured I’d think of something to do with it. I did come up with a way to produce it and use it!
This summer I started playing with doing the Ambitious Card with the cards spread on the table, not with the effect happening in my hands. For context, here are my two previous posts about it:
I now have the three phases worked out and cleaned up the handling a bit. It’s a much tighter routine than before. Here’s the version I’m currently doing:
One of the things I’ve recently added was anticipating that in the second phase that the spectator would almost immediately point to the top card. Being able to foresee that and being able to show that card as not being their card is a great moment.
I’m really enjoying performing this version of the Ambitious Card, and like it much more than doing it entirely in my hands.
Yesterday I took a quick break from performing on the fair circuit and did a senior show. This was a “monthly activity” for seniors at a retirement community. Most of these places need entertainment and host multiple entertainers a month to perform at things like monthly birthdays, holidays, etc.
If you’d like more info on performing senior shows check out my book How To Perform For Seniors which teaches you how to market and perform shows at these communities.
My current 40-45 minute show fits into the black case, which is briefcase sized.
The yellow case is my audio gear.
The show was put together to visually fill a little bit of space and not look like I’m just using flat handheld props that were selected because they easily fit into a briefcase.
The nice thing about this show is that it can be done using people from the audience, and it can also be done “no contact”, so no one from the audience joins me on the stage or handles any props.
Aside from any COVID restrictions, the no contact option is handy as sometimes you’ll have a less mobile group and it’s not easy to have people join you on stage. Having them interact from their seats is good, however if you physically go to them in the back row, a lot of the audience can’t see what’s happening. When you talk to them from the stage and the magic still happens onstage the whole audience can see what’s going on.
