Here is a well put together tutorial video of the classic needle through balloon trick from Instructables user SaskView. A little bit of setup is involved however it is minimal and quite discreet. Check out the tutorial video below.
[via instructables]
Sandrostiger @ Metacafe has a very cool magic trick for a great card reveal. The best part of his tutorial is that he shows you how to make a magnetic card thus opening up a huge door of possibilities for card tricks. In his tutorial he uses two cards to make the gimmick however I imagine one could even just peel a card to construct an even more convincing and inspectable gimmick. Visit the Gaff Card Resources Page for a link to peeling cards. Check out the video below.
[via magictrickclips]
David Zanthor Rules!! I crack up just looking at this dude’s facial expressions. But if there is one thing to learn from him other than his trick explanations, its that any clumsy, overly cocky dude (despite overly fat fingers) can perform mind blowing street magic. BTW Did I mention that Zanthor Rules!
Through my online journeys and searches over the past few days trying to find more content for the site, I am finding myself in awe over the insane amount of free information that exists out there regarding magic and illusions. I’m not talking about “exposure”, that is boring, I’m talking about good solid “Textual Data” on magic. The following are books for download at Google books, and all completely FREE. Some are only previews, while many that I came across have much of the book available.
Check this online copy of the “Memoirs of Robert Houdini” for download at google books.
My Best Self-Working Card Tricks
or The Complete Idiots Guide to Magic Tricks, a 374 page book on magic tricks
Science Experiments Index - (Science and magic Rocks!)
Presenting and Training with Magic - 53 simple tricks you can do to energize any audience.
Magic in Theory: An Introduction to the Theoretical and Psychological
Self-Working Card Tricks: 72 Foolproof Card Miracles for the Amateur Magician
Scarne on Card Tricks - 55 professional card trick
Encyclopedia of Card Tricks - 402 pages (wow)
The Little Giant Book of Card Tricks - 352 pages
The Art of Magic -352 pages
Self-Working Number Magic: 101 Foolproof Tricks - 154 pages
and the list goes on and on and on to no end.Id be willing to bet you that almost any modern effect out there today was inspired by a trick that was learned by the creator from books JUST like the ones listed above. Id even bet there is a torn and restored card routine you could tweak in one of those books. This is such a great find I am creating a page titled “Magic Library” in the upper right sidebar which will contain this list of links AND I will continue to update it and organize it as I find more relevant books to add to the library (and trust me I will) so be sure and bookmark the library and NOT this post.
Cheers
I got tired of drawing out my own soda can tops so I decided to do some searching to see if anyone out there had printable tops. I found nothing of the sort. A few pictures of soda can tops but not quite what I was looking for. There was nothing left to do but make my own.
To start it off here are two slightly different widemouth tops. You may have to rescale them a little, but this should be pretty close.
just right click and select “save as” on the images
If anyone has any requests or would like to submit their own please email phatus@phatus.com or create and account and post in the comments section. We should have more soon.
