Phatus Update

As we make our way into April, here is a list of some projects we are working on for the near future.

- A PDF ebook titled “The Phatus guide to creating gaffed playing cards” which is a much more in depth and highly advanced guide than our current video tutorial and instructable. This guide covers a wider range of aspects for the making process as well as new alternative printing experiments and even a section titled “finishing the card” which will contain updated information on our experiments with putting a new “finish” on the card to re-gain its smoothness and reduce friction. This will increase the quality of your gaff 10 fold and it will once again shine.

- Mars explanation/tutorial in PDF instant download is just around the corner for purchase to the public. Once again, Phatus.com blog account holders with sufficient credits will get first crack at the beta release.

- A highly visual and simple bottle cap through bottle routine. Perfect for bars.

- A Torn and Restored Card routine I have been working on for quite some time that was inspired to me both by Daniel Garcia’s “Torn” and “Unripped” by Gared Crawford. I unofficially call the trick “Un-Torn” for lack of a better name. This routine is basically a cross between Torn and Unripped. I loved the elegant simplicity and visual aspects of torn however I did not like the putting the 2 pieces in my pocket aspect. I saw that in unripped you could hand the card over halfway into the restore and I WANTED THAT. I was however disappointed by the fact that you could not hand the actual “Signed Card” over to the spectator at the end. (Which the teaser neglects to inform you of btw. More of that “sales deception”) So what I have done is combined the concept of the two illusions into one where the spectator signs the card, the magician tears the card, shows 4 pieces, keeps 2 and bites the other 2 in his teeth to keep in full view at all times. You then restore the first two pieces and immediately and very cleanly, hand over the half restored portion to the spectator keeping the other two torn cards in your teeth. You then take the half card back and one piece from your teeth and restore it, followed by the last piece. The signed card is then handed over to the spectator for inspection. All while allowing for highly visual restores like that of torn.

- The lost DIY magnetic quarter project. (yes we haven’t forgot…..yet) Since our posting of the DIY magnetic quarter we have ran into many kinks in the project. We have also encountered many advancements in the project though making for a kicker surprise if all works out. We still plan on bringing something to you on this as soon as we have a quality and solid system for creating them.

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Print Multiple Gaff Cards (6) at Once

You know round here at phatus we like ourselves some free any chance we get. Well heres 2 for the weekend. Happy Easter!
First freebee is openoffice.org – OpenOffice is a full suite of “open source” office applications. It supports many formats and best of all its FREE. The Main application of interest at the moment is OpenOffice’s “Calc”. Calc is OpenOffice’s substitute for Microsoft Excel. And quite the substitute it is.

This brings me to my next links. I say if you are gonna print some gaffs, then print some gaffs. Here are two files. Both are “Calc” files that I have created. The files have their cells set to the exact dimensions of a standard playing card and fit 6 cards per sheet.

(One with borders) and
(One without borders). We suggest a thick cardstock paper for the next steps. Simply open the first file with borders in calc, mark the bottom left of the first paper in the printer tray, and print it out. Now cut out the space(s) you would like to print in with a razor knife and straightedge. Now your blanks should embed themselves perfectly in your cutout(s). Now just Tape the back around the perimeter covering as much of the card as you like and as a bonus the face is completely exposed(use laser labels instead of tape for easy peeling). Next, load the second borderless file into Calc. Click the mouse once in the cell that you would like to insert your gaff into. Next From the file menu select (insert, picture, from file), then select your gaff card file. Assuming you cropped your borders good on your image, Calc will automatically scale and center the gaff image in the cell leaving you with 5 other bays available. Use em up, and print it!. Remember to make note of the “BL”(bottom left) that you marked in the first print. The cards should peel easy out of the cardstock (like a sticker), and plus you can save the cardstock as a template for your next 6. This will save you much ink in the long run on test prints.
Here is an attempt at an export to Microsoft excel (no guarantees) Borders | No Borders
Hope you enjoy this.

Note: This is new and experimental, If you have troubles with the template’s sizes or alignment please email us.

Posted in Free Magic Tricks, Gaff Material, General | 5 Comments »