Tag: card magic

Nest of Envelopes – Single Spot

A few days ago was a meeting for the Portland SAM magic club. I remembered it was a meeting day, so I wrote a new script for it, made the cards for a new method and tried doing it as a solo spot instead of as a running gag.

The script had the flow that I wanted, and the spots for the jokes that I wanted were there. The jokes were just meh for the most part, but for me, the important thing was to get it in front of people to see how it felt.

The trick played well, but the ending is going to take time to figure out the best way to reveal the card at the end. I have a lot of options and variables on those options, like is the person from the audience onstage, does the whole thing happen in the crowd, do they hand me the final envelope from the audience, but I open it onstage, etc.

This is work!

-Louie
PS Click here to read more about how I develop magic tricks!

The Nest of Envelopes – Update

In playing with different ideas with the Nest of Envelopes, I’m trying to decide if it works better as a bit that’s split up as a running gag sort of thing, or if it’s better and a single trick.

nest of envelopes

The advantage of it being part of a single trick is that the effect and the selection process are much clearer. That’s because it all just happened.

I’m still doing it as a card trick, and I’ve also learned it needs to be done with jumbo cards! I’m personally not a fan of using poker-sized cards where people in the audience need to see that a card is a specific card. Having the reveal of the card bigger will make it hit harder.

This routine has a way to go, but I think it’s a great idea!

-Louie

Nest of Envelopes as a Running Gag

This routine is starting to take shape. First, I had the idea of doing a running gag with a nest of envelopes. Then I figured out what the magic trick payoff at the end of the running gag would be. The last piece of the puzzle is to figure out the routine.

Each envelope will have an instruction written on it. This is independent of the card selection process.

The rough flow is that they will make a choice, like red or black. Then they will open the envelope, and written on that envelope will be an instruction. They do that. Then you do another routine and come back to the person with the envelope. You give them the next choice, like hearts or diamonds. Then they open the envelope and do what’s written on it. That is repeated until the choices have narrowed it down to a specific card. The last envelope has the invisible deck in it, which reveals the selected card!

I think this will make the invisible deck play bigger with all the envelopes, but also allow me to get more time out of the prop, without it being a single routine that’s dragged out.

-Louie

The Nest of Envelopes Trick

nest of envelopes

For the Nest of Envelopes, I need to figure out what is going to end up inside the envelopes. I’m thinking that a choice will be made as each envelope is opened. And those choices will narrow it down to a single thing. Then that single thing or representation (i.e., picture of it) will be in the innermost envelope.

While I hate for this to end up being a card trick, it looks like it will be. A deck of cards lends itself to being a group of items that can be grouped in a lot of different ways that are easily remembered. You can give people choices like: color, suit, letter or number, odd or even, male or female, exact value (i.e., four). A performer friend and I sat down and tried to brainstorm different things that could be grouped in different ways, hopefully four or five groups. We didn’t come up with anything that was good or easy for a person to understand.

If the trick is going to end up being a playing card prediction, then the obvious choice is an invisible deck. I travel with Rough Stick, so I quickly made an invisible deck:

invisible deck with rough stick

I don’t know if this will be the final method, but it’s nice because it’s self-contained. The deck can go into the smallest envelope, and I don’t need to add or alter anything. Just open the envelopes, and when we get to the invisible deck, spread it to reveal the selection.

-Louie

Old Magic Props in Real Life!

There are magic props that look like they were created to make a trick work, and don’t exist in real life. The TV Card Frame magic trick where a card appears between two pieces of glass is one of those tricks.

TV Card frame

Recently at a junk shop I saw a picture frame that I’m guessing is what the TV Card Frame is trying to look like:

tv card frame

I’m always amazed that these things that look strange to me, but were created long before I was born, were designed to sort of look like things that existed in real life back then.

I wonder what props that look like everyday items now won’t look like anything people will have interact 40 years from now?

-Louie

Jumbo Tom Foolery Transformation

The Jumbo Tom Foolery Transformation is a series of changes of four playing cards. One at a time, the cards flip over, then the backs change color, then the faces change.

Here’s a quick demo of it:

The challenge with this is that you use the same move 13 times in the routine. I think this routine was originally done with poker sized cards, but then someone decided to sell it in jumbo size to have an additional product to sell. The move doesn’t really lend itself to the jumbo cards, especially with the provided thick 8082 Bicycle Cards!

I came up with a different handling, the move still has to be done 13 times, but I think it makes more sense with jumbo cards. Here it is with my move:

While this is a trick I’ll probably never do for an audience, figuring out a better way to do it was a nice way to exercise my brain!

-Louie

Any Card At Any Number

One of the days I was performing at the Moisture Festival, there was a delay in starting the show. The producers asked me if I could fill some time to keep the people in the theater occupied. I did my Any Card At Any Number (ACAAN). Here’s the full spot because there’s a joke that’s a callback and doesn’t make sense if you don’t see the beginning before the trick starts.

For me, ACAAN is a great stage trick; it’s solo with just me onstage, but it involves the audience, and it’s a good trick!

-Louie

A Toast to Nick Trost #3

In the book The Card Magic of Nick Trost there’s cool trick called Double Pinochle with an Elevator Finish. Here’s what the trick looks like as written:

It’s a nice change of four cards. What I don’t like about it is that it’s themed with the game of Pinochle, which isn’t as common as it was in the past.

Here’s what I came up with to update it:

The first change I made was for it to use four jokes, instead of two queens and two jokers. Then I used my Elmsley For Video move that allows you to show all four kings when you do the Elmsley Count and not have to show one card twice. Then procedurally, I needed to add a displacement so that I could get a clean display at the end, so I did a weird sort of top change off the bottom of the packet to the top of the deck.

Hope you like my changes

-Louie

Out of Town Shipping Notice

**The daily blog will continue to be updated below this notice**

I will be out of town for all of April 2026. That means no orders will ship until I return on May 4th, 2026.

I recently shipped a bunch of my magic products to TrickSupply.com in Las Vegas. You can order my magic from them at:
https://tricksupply.com/product-category/louie-foxx/

Magic Store

Any orders placed directly with me in April won’t ship or work to build won’t start until I return on May 4th.

**The daily blog will continue to be updated below this notice**

Portland Magic Jam – Day 3

The final day of last week’s Portland Magic Jam had the Paul Draper lecture. He does a choose your own lecture where the audience asks him to talk about things and he talks about what the audience requests.

paul draper lecture

Then there was a panel Q and A with all the weekend’s headliners.

magic convention panel

Then David Kaye and I snuck out so I could take him for the most Portland lunch, which was eating at a food truck pod!

food truck pod magicians

Then the weekend for me ended with the magic contest.

magic contest
magic contest

Unfortunately, I forgot to take more pictures of the contest. There were a couple of extra charge workshops going on after the contest, but I had plans with my wife, so I couldn’t do any of them.

The weekend at the Portland Magic Jam was a ton of fun! I wish I could go to more of these, however, my performing schedule doesn’t let me.

-Louie