sleight of hand – Page 2

Take Care of Yourself

For a few years now I’ve had trouble with the middle finger on my right hand. Sometimes when I bend it, it gets locked bent. Obviously having my fingers work is important to a magician. It’s been really bad the last few months, so I finally went to the doctor to have it looked at.

The doctor said it’s Trigger Finger and referred me to a hand specialist for the next steps. He said that the treatment is typically some sort of physical therapy and maybe an injection or two.

I really wish I had gone in over a year ago when it was clear that this was a chronic thing and not a one off sort of thing. Taking care of my hands should be a priority of anyone that’s a magician!

-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

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

Lucky Penny Magic Trick

A trick I’ve been doing as part of my EDC magic is signed penny to key fob. The effect is a signed coin ends up permanently sealed inside of a “lucky coin” holder on your keychain. The nice thing about this is that it’s almost 100% self contained. I have everything I need to do the trick on my keychain, except a marker.

I’ve been using my original first design for a little bit and spent a little bit of time other day tweaking the design. The colors are just what was in the printer and have nothing to do with the design, besides making it easier to tell them apart.

The first redesign was good, the second was better and the third was a huge step backwards. I went back to the second redesign and it was the best of the three. That’s the great thing about 3D printing, it’s easy to tweak designs to get them where you want them!

-Louie

A Shuffle and a Cut to Order!

I’ve been playing with some shuffle sequences. You can see one of them at this blog post from a few days ago called Red / Black Separation. In a natural extension of that shuffle sequence I came up with what I’m calling A Shuffle and a Cut to Order.

Here’s what it looks like:

@louiefoxx Shuffle and a cut to order! #cardtrick #magictrick #shuffle #cards #poker #magic #magician ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I like the progressive nature of this routine where the cards go from shuffled, to separated by color to finally them all in new deck order! The trick has three different beats to it (but not three effects) which I like and each builds upon the previous. The other night thing about this over the previous Red/Black Separation is that this is much easier to do!

I’m glad I kept playing with this!

-Louie

Original (?) Packet Trick

If you follow me on TikTok, you know I’m into vintage magic tricks and really into old packet tricks. I’ve wanted to come up with an original Emerson and West style packet trick with full story patter. I didn’t want to come up with a variation of something that already existed.

The other day I threw some cards into my backpack and with my time between gigs I came up with this:

@louiefoxx A Car Buying story with Cards! #cardtrick #carbuying #magic #magictrick #sedan #sportscar #carsalesman #story #magician ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

This is actually the second version of the story. The first version is more personal to me and my story, where the one above is more generic. I think this is fairly close to the Emerson and West style, it’s got all the mini effects and the pun/kicker ending.

The handling sequence just worked itself out. It was too easy, so I’m assuming someone has to have come up with it before, but it’s original to me.

This was a lot of fun to work out!
-Louie

One Dollar Bills to Two Dollar Bills

Yesterday I posted about a thing I was playing with using money instead of playing cards for packet tricks. I’ll give a walkthrough of how to do it, but first here’s the video of the routine:

@louiefoxx Double your money! #money #double #magic #moneymagic #dollar #twodollarbill #magician ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

Needed: Three one dollar bills and three two dollar bills. These must be crisp, and the fake movie money works great for this.

Set Up: From the top down: A single one dollar bill, then the 3 two dollar bills and the remaining 2 one dollar bills.

Working: Show the packet of bills face down and then turn them face up. Do an Elmsley Count to show what appears to be the faces of 4 one dollar bills.

For the first change you will do another Elmsley Count to show that one of the one dollar bills has turned into a two dollar bill.

Repeat that, doing another Elmsley Count for the second one dollar bill to change into a two dollar bill, but this time put it the final bill bottom instead of the top of the stack.

For the third change you will do another Elmsley Count, however this time when you get to the single one dollar bill outjog it about an inch. Set the final bill (two dollar) on top of the stack.

Strip out the one dollar bill with your right hand and show it on both sides. As that his happening your left hand buckles the bottom bill creating a gap between it and the rest of the bills above it. Your right hand puts the one dollar bill into this gap above the lowermost bill in your left hand.

For the final bill to change, simply do a modified Elmsley Count to show four two dollar bills on both sides. Do the first two counts Elmsley Count, leaving you with the block of bills in your right hand and 2 two dollar bills in your left hand. Your left hand spreads its two bills and turns over to show both sides. The left hand then puts the two bills UNDER the bills in your right hand. The whole packet of bills is then flipped face down and Elmsley Counted to show four backs.

That’s it, a change of 4 one dollar bills to 4 two dollar bills. Nothing really ground breaking there, but I think this will be a stepping stone for something better…I hope!

-Louie

Packet Tricks With Money

This isn’t a new idea, but doing packet tricks with money seems like a good way to get away from card tricks while still doing card tricks. I’m aware of a few of packet style tricks that use paper money that have been sold or published in the past.

I bought a pack of the fake “movie” money on Amazon and started playing around with what can be done. Here’s the first thing that I learned, the modern US currency has color variations on most of the bills, so it’s really hard to do anything because anything hidden hast to be perfectly squared. Also, unlike cards the different amounts of money doesn’t all have the same back. Then there’s the problem with the bills needing to stay crisp!

The solution to the first problem is was easy, use $1’s and $2’s as they have the same color edges. Emotionally changing a one dollar bill to a two dollar bill doesn’t hit as hard as turning a one into a one hundred. However two dollar bills are interesting as people thing they’re rare, so there could be something there.

Here’s what I came up with:

@louiefoxx Double your money! #money #double #magic #moneymagic #dollar #twodollarbill #magician ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

There’s not much to it, just a few Elmsley Counts and a Buckle.

I wonder If this would work better held at chest height as a platform/stage piece over a close up trick?

Anyway, I think there’s something with packet tricks with bills. I don’t think this it and there’s a better application out there!

-Louie

False Shuffle Sequence

A couple of weeks ago I started playing with a shuffle sequence. Essentially it’s a few zarrow shuffles:

@louiefoxx Every day I’m shufflin’#cardtrick #magictrick #cardmagic #shuffle #cards ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

What I think it fun about this is that in the middle there’s a display of the deck mixed before they end up back in order. In my stage show when there’s video projection I do a shuffle sequence where the deck stays in order, however I’m currently not doing the mixed display. I think that this is interesting for magicians, I don’t know if non-magicians appreciate the it.

I’ll give it a try…

-Louie

Queens to Queens

One thing I realized when posting on social media is that a lot of standard techniques that work in an in person show don’t hold up to video. One example is using an Elmsley Count of four of the same cards, but you’re passing one card off as two. You say you have four queens, and count through them, and don’t call out the suits, so one suit shows twice. This doesn’t hold up to repeated watching.

Here’s my solution to it:

@louiefoxx Super Quick and Stupid Card Trick! #cardtrick #magic #magictrick #cards #playingcards #queens #red #black ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

In the trick above at the end you see all four suits, however you I’m only showing three cards. The solution is something that I stumbled on and it’ll be in the February issue of Vanish Magazine.

It’s a small thing and won’t improve or apply to every trick where you’re passing of the same card as two different cards using an Elmsley Count, but it’s a nice thing to be able to add when it makes sense!

-Louie