Recently, I acquired a 60+ year old box of magic tricks. I’m guessing this belonged to Portland, OR magicians Duane Duvall. One of the things I think is interesting is looking inside the working cases of magicians. How did they keep their props in the case during their show?
Here’s a look at the case from the 1960s:
Simple solutions to holding things on the lid and around the inside of the case.
-Louie
Come learn about the magic tricks that I create!
If you’re not a magician, but “magic curious” this is a great way to get some insight into magic and also learn a bit more about the magic magic club.
If you’re a magician, there’s lot of magic to learn. This is more that tricks, there’s a lot of insight into the how’s and why’s of performing magic tricks.
This is a free event put on by the Portland Society of Magicians
January 10 at 7pm
Location: Oregon stamp society bldg
4828 NE 33rd ave, Portland OR
If you can’t make it, you can get a set of the lecture notes at:
https://www.magicshow.tips/lecture-notes-2025/
-Louie
I started using a handheld whiteboard in my show last summer. I never really thought much about it, it’s just a prop I used. Then a couple of weeks ago I saw a picture of me performing with it.
The backside of it looked like garbage. The backside was just cardboard, and it’d gotten dinged up over months of use. I went for a simple fix and just covered the back with some stick on black velvet that I had
It looks way better now! I’m glad I noticed that in the picture, it’s a small thing I could do to make my show look a little bit classier.
-Louie
In the June 1946 issue of The Bat magic magazine, there’s a trick called Puff by Frank Chapman. The effect is that you have a small piece of paper that you roll into a tube. You blow through the tube, and a ribbon comes out. That’s it. I think the effect can be changed a little bit to make it better.
First of all, why produce a ribbon? Ribbon isn’t valuable or interesting. The only reason I can think of is to do a trick with the ribbon.
Second, why not add a layer to this? Right now you snuck ribbon into a tube of rolled up paper.
Here’s my idea to address those two things.
Effect: You show a small piece of paper that has the colors of the rainbow printed on it. Someone picks a color; you then roll the paper into a tube, and that color confetti flies out.
Needed: A piece of paper with a rainbow printed on it. This would be the six color rainbow. The colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple in that order. You’ll also need a thumb tip with a small hole at the tip and some yellow confetti.
Set up: Put the confetti into the thumb tip. The thumb tip starts on your thumb, and you’re holding the piece of paper.
Working: Show the paper and force the color yellow using the “hot rod force”. Roll the paper into a tube around the thumb tip. Lift the tube with thumb tip to your lips and blow through the end with the small hole. As the confetti flies out, put the thumb tip on your other thumb as you unroll the paper.
That’s it. Super easy, not much to it, but the trick is better. The force of a color makes it a bit more of a head scratcher. The confetti falling is visually interesting, and no one expects you to scoop it up and do something with it. Confetti falling is a period, not a comma.
-Louie
In the off season I spend time replacing worn out parts of my show. The fish bowl on the left is the one I’ve used in the show for the last year, and the one one the right is the new one.
It always amazes me how things can get beaten up slowly, and because it happens over time, I don’t notice till it’s really bad. It’s always good to check your props and clean or replace them regularly!
You might not notice the wear, but people do.
-Louie
For decades, I’ve wanted to do a snake basket that combined the two popular versions from the late 1990s. Those two were Terry Lunceford’s Viper and Collector’s Workshop’s Khyber Kobra. I wrote a blog post about those two a few months ago, which includes videos of them; you can read it here. In a nutshell, I wanted to combine the two of them, so there’s the byplay of the Khyber Kobra with the ending of the Viper.
I’ve been working on learning to use Arduino and over the summer I made a working model on an Arduino simulator, but haven’t had time to actually make it, until a few days ago.
The arrangement above has a lot of wires, but it works! All of the functions do their thing. Like any project, once it becomes a physical thing, it will change. I realized I could eliminate one motor and have one servo handle two tasks. The motor would make the snake rise, then the servo would make it move back and forth. I decided to eliminate the motor and have the servo make the snake rise and shake. That simplified this a lot, and here’s the new wiring:
Usually, simpler is better; here’s less to go wrong, and it’s easier to diagnose if something does go wrong.
The next step will be to move it from an Arduino UNO board to an ESP32 board and put everything onto a PCB board for more sturdy final version of this.
-Louie
Recently, I bought an old box of magic props from the late 1950s/early 1960s, and it contained some 65ish year old flash paper. People frequently ask in magic social media groups, “Does flash paper go bad?” Well, let’s find out!
I’m amazed that it worked as well as it did and that it didn’t burn my fingers!
I think the issue that people have with flash paper is that they store it wet for safety, which is absolutely what you should do. Then dry out what you need to use a few days before you need it. That said, I think the paper sitting wet in a sealed bag over time will deteriorate. That takes years, and you really should be buying decades worth of flash paper at one time. It’s something you really should be buying a few months supply at a time. I personally wouldn’t want to store a ton of it at home.
Be safe.
-Louie
Right now I’m writing a show that I’ll be doing for a elementary school assembly tour in April. One of the challenges is that I’m trying to avoid the whole 6 7 thing.
That makes counting tricks a challenge and there’s a card across type trick that I’ve written into the show. I don’t want to lose control halfway counting a packet of cards, and that needs to be done four times!
Right now is that my plan it to talk about the objects as I’m counting them. That would break up the 6 to 7 with dialogue between them. I’m not sure if that will work, but it’s an idea. Another idea is to use 9 items instead of the traditional 10. Then if three items move from one packet to the other, that will reduce the counting that will have the numbers 6 and 7 from four times to three times.
Another option would be to not have the trick about counting, but about specific items moving from pile to pile. So three red backed cards end up in a blue backed packet.
I’m not sure how this will play out…
-Louie
Today I’m reflecting on 2025 and it looks like I did 204 contracts last year! Some of those are were multiple show/day contracts, but that’s the easiest metric I have for that. I spent just over a month on the ocean performing on cruise ships and we bought a house.
Last year my new year’s resolution was to read more, and scroll less on my phone. I did that…but I can still be better about that. I have a feeling that “read more” is going to be a perpetual new year’s resolution for me.
Here’s what I’m hoping to do this year:
That’s not a lot, and nothing it too ambitious. The big one is still going to be reading more.
-Louie
On this episode we welcome hula hoop specialist and circus organizer Vanessa Vortex. We learn about growing up on Broadway in New York and how she rebelled against her Show Biz parents by going to college.
We learn about her journey across the country, how she got involved in circus and what led her to be one of the co-founders of the Bellingham Circus Guild. A fantastic conversation with an amazing person to have in our community.
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