Instructions for the magic.
1.THE THUMB TIP
The thumb tip is one of the most popular secret devices ever invented for magicians. It looks like a little plastic thumb but you can use this sneaky device to create some absolutely astonishing magic. The tip is worn on the end of your right thumb when you are going to perform your effects. It should be snug on the thumb, but your thumb should not go all the way in. There needs to be a space between the tip of your thumb and the end of the thumb tip to allow objects to be hidden inside. When wearing the thumb tip, never show it directly to your friends but, instead, keep it hidden behind your fingers. If you keep your hands in motion the thumb tip will not be seen or suspected! You can also point, briefly, directly at someone while wearing the thumb tip. If kept in motion the very tip of the thumb tip looks just like a real thumb. It is the sides and back of the thumb tip that you want to make sure they never see!
2.THE VANISHING HANDKERCHIEF
For many of the effects, such as the vanishing handkerchief, you will need to be able to secretly load the thumb tip into your left hand. While holding the handkerchief with your right hand fingers and with the thumb tip already on your right thumb and hidden behind the handkerchief, bring the handkerchief over to the left hand. At the same time casually make a fist with your left hand. Now, in one motion, stick your thumb with the thumb tip on it into the top of your left fist and quickly withdraw your thumb, leaving the thumb tip hidden in the top of your left fist. Now, immediately, start to push your handkerchief into the top of your left fist, using your first finger. You can also alternate using your middle finger or even your pinky. Push the handkerchief all the way into the fist, and, for the last push or two, use your right thumb. On that last push you will secretly stick your thumb deep into the thumb tip and withdraw it out of your fist. You now have the hidden handkerchief in the thumb tip on your right thumb. Do not look at your hands when you do this. Instead, look directly at your friends! You can now open your hands freely, to show that the handkerchief has disappeared. Just make sure that you are keeping your hands in motion and that you do not have the side or back of the thumb tip exposed. Instead, point your fingers toward the audience so all they see is the tip of the thumb tip! You can now make your handkerchief reappear in a number of ways, including by sticking your right hand into your pocket and leaving the thumb tip, while withdrawing the handkerchief!
3.THE LAST PUSH
This will take you a little more practice, but it is a technique favored by many professional magicians. Instead of using your thumb for the last push or two, you will apparently use your fingers. Poke in your right first finger as you did before, but this time move the opening of the thumb tip backwards so that it is sticking out of the back of your left fist with the left fingers keeping it against the left palm. Keep the back of your hand to your friends so that they can’t see it. Now tap the top of your left fist with your right hand fingers and, as you do so, let your right thumb enter the thumb tip from behind and remove it from the back of the fist. The beauty of this method is that the right thumb is never seen to enter the fist. Even if you are working with somebody who might know about thumb tips, this retrieval will fool them if done correctly!
4.RETRIEVING THE THUMB TIP
After the vanishing handkerchief trick, instead of ditching the thumb tip and handkerchief into your pocket, you can make the handkerchief reappear from your left fist. After you show your hands to be empty, close your left fist once again and, using your right thumb with the hidden handkerchief inside the thumb tip, stick your thumb into the top of the fist. With your right hand, make a magical pass over your fist, and then, using your right fingers and thumb, start to slowly pull the handkerchief out of your fist. Under cover of the handkerchief you are now holding with your right hand, casually stick your right thumb back inside your fist and retrieve the thumb tip. You can then casually place your hand in your pocket and ditch the thumb tip!
5.A FUN REPRODUCTION
Here’s a great way to reproduce your handkerchief! After you have made the handkerchief vanish say, “It must have gone somewhere! Let me look up your sleeve!” With your left hand hold your friend’s wrist at the end of their sleeve. Now put your right hand against their sleeve so that your fingers covering your thumb. Your thumb (with the tip on it) goes into their sleeve. With your left fingers grip the thumb tip (through the sleeve) and drag out the handkerchief by removing your right thumb. Once the handkerchief is free put your right thumb back into the tip and release their wrist. This astonishing effect is a favorite with many top professional magicians!
6.THE COST OF A HANDKERCHIEF
Have a quarter (or any small coin) in your left-hand pocket. As you go into your routine, put your left hand into your pocket and hide the coin in your hand at the base of your fingers. Keep your fingers curled in so that when you remove your hand from your pocket the coin stays hidden. Now perform the vanish of a handkerchief just as you did above. The only difference will be that you have a hidden coin in your left hand when you put the thumb tip there. At the end of the trick, the handkerchief will be in your thumb tip and the left hand will just contain the coin. Say, “Do you know how much that handkerchief cost me at the magic store?” Whatever they say open your hand to show that the handkerchief has gone and there’s just the coin. Say, “It cost me exactly 25¢!”
7.VANISHING WATER
Your thumb tip can make lots of other things vanish for you. It can even make a small amount of liquid vanish, if you do this effect do it over a bowl or sink and not over an antique table! Load the thumb tip into your left hand then pour in a tiny amount of water making sure it goes into the thumb tip. Steal the thumb tip just as you have done when making the silk vanish then say, “People have said that it is impossible to do magic with water but today we prove them wrong!” Open your hand to show that the water has completely vanished! You can use any liquid here, magic pals!
8.THE MAGIC MONEY CRYSTAL TUBE
The Crystal Tube is actually made up of two tubes. Before your show, place the smaller tube inside of the larger one. No one is supposed to know about this secret insert! When you are ready to perform, sit down at a table and roll or fold up a dollar bill and place it inside of the inner tube. Now roll the tubes inside of a piece of paper with the opening of the tubes facing your right. Now twist the left end of the tube as you turn the right side towards yourself. Secretly allow the inner plastic tube with the hidden dollar bill to slip out of the paper and into your lap! Then, twist the other end closed. Now, make a magical gesture or say a few magic words, and then open the paper. The dollar bill will be gone! If you want you can have the spectator open the paper instead and as he is doing that you can place the tube on your lap into your pocket. After the trick you can put your hand in your pocket and slide the dollar bill out of the inner tube and hand it to them for an even more impressive ending!
9.COUNTDOWN
Place two dollar bills inside an envelope. During your show, open the envelope and remove one of the dollar bills, being careful that the audience does not see the second dollar bill. Close up the envelope and put it off to the side. Put the dollar bill into your tube and wrap it in a sheet of paper, letting the inner tube fall into your lap. Tell the audience that this time-traveling trick takes ten seconds. Do a countdown from 10 to 1, then open up the paper to reveal that the dollar bill has vanished. Open the envelope to show the dollar bill inside and say, “It traveled back in time!”
10.SILKWORM
If you don’t want to use money, you can use your tube to make just about anything vanish that will fit into it. A favorite of many professionals who use this item is to make a small handkerchief vanish that has been stuffed into the tube. Use your imagination as to what you could make vanish!
11.CARD MONTE
Take a look at your two special cards. One is a double-faced card, and the other is a doublebacked card. The audience is not supposed to know that these cards are trick cards! Put the double-faced card on top of the double-backed card. Have the top card (double-faced), angled toward the right so you can see the bottom card, too, just like a fan of cards. Hold the cards gently between your thumb on the top card and your first finger on the bottom card, towards the center of the cards. Show the cards to your friend by holding them as instructed and then turn your wrist over at the same time as you slide the top card to the left. When your wrist is turned, they will now see the other side of the double-faced card, believing it to be the second card. Then turn your wrist back and again slide the top card, this time to the right. Practice this turning motion, to get it right, so it doesn’t look like you are doing anything sneaky. Then take the top card (double-faced), show it to your friend and put it behind your back as you ask your friend what card that leaves in your hand. They will of course say the name of the card they just saw. With your hand still behind your back, simply turn the card over, and then bring it out with the other side showing, proving them wrong. For fun, this can be repeated a couple of times, but not too many, so they won’t get suspicious!
MAGIC WITH EVERYDAY OBJECTS
12.THE LINKING PAPER CLIP
For this wild effect, you’ll need two paper clips and a dollar bill. If you don’t have a dollar you can use any currency or a piece of paper. Fold the bill into an “S” shape and clip it together with the open end of the dollar clipped to one side of the inside fold and the other end of the dollar clipped to one side of the other inside fold. Now pull the ends of the paper apart- the two paper clips will fly into the air and link together all by themselves!
13.THE JUMPING RUBBER BAND
You’ll need, surprise, surprise, a rubber band to perform this neat little effect. Put the rubber band over your first and second fingers. Make sure that your palm is facing you and the back of your hand is toward the audience. Curl your fingers down into a fist, but as you do, pull the rubber band out towards you and slip all of your fingers inside of it, letting the rubber band rest against the bottom part of your fingers, near the nail. From the front where your helpers are watching, it will appear as though the band were around just the first two fingers. Say a magic word and straighten your fingers out. The band will magically hop onto your third and little fingers!
14.THE TRAPPED JUMPING RUBBER BAND
If you twist another rubber band around the tips of your fingers as shown, it will appear as though the first rubber band cannot escape. But, astonishingly, if you perform the moves as you did in the previous effect, the effect will still work! This is a good follow-up to the trick, as you are repeating the trick under even more difficult conditions!
15.DOUBLE JUMPER
Another great follow-up to the previous tricks involves two different colored rubber bands. Put one over your first two fingers and one over your third and little fingers. Close your hand into a fist, fingers towards you, and put all four fingers into both rubber bands. Now, when you straighten out your fingers the rubber bands will change places. This will even work with a third band twisted around your fingertips, as in the trapped rubber band trick, making for a very baffling mystery indeed!
16.RING UP RUBBER BAND
Even a broken rubber band can be used to create magic! Borrow a ring from an audience member and put it on your broken rubber band. Now grip the band in the center with one hand, keeping the rest hidden in your hand. With your other hand, stretch out the band so that it is sloping upwards. The ring should be at the bottom of the slope, nearer to the hand with the hidden portion of rubber band. Now slowly let the band slip between your fingers, releasing the portion you concealed. The ring will creep uphill in a very magical way! The slower you let the band come out from your hand, the slower and more magical the creeping action will be.
17.THE UNBROKEN TOOTHPICK
For this trick, you will need a cloth napkin with hem, and two toothpicks (not included in the set). Before the performance, you need to secretly put one of the toothpicks (toothpick A) into the hem of the cloth. To begin, you will lay out the piece of cloth and place the other toothpick (toothpick B) at the center of the piece of cloth. Now fold the piece of cloth around toothpick B and seemingly hold onto it. In fact, you are secretly holding onto toothpick A in the hem of the cloth while toothpick B is left free inside the cloth. Now ask a volunteer to break the toothpick through the piece of cloth (actually you will let the volunteer break toothpick A inside the hem. Make sure that they confirm that they have broken the toothpick by feeling that it really broken. Now open the piece of cloth and magically show the volunteer toothpick B which is not broken.
18.THE SNEAKY COUNT
Get ten toothpicks and on one of them make a tiny secret mark on both sides so that you can tell this one apart from the others. Make the mark as small as possible with a pencil so that you are the only one who knows it is there. During your show, bring out the ten toothpicks and put them out in a line side by side. Make that your secretly marked toothpick is the first one on the left hand end of the row. That means the secret marked toothpick is on your left, but your audience’s right. Say that you will turn your back and that one of them is to move a number of toothpicks between one and ten, one at a time, from their right to their left end of the row. This means the first toothpick they will move is the secret toothpick. When they have finished, turn back and say, “As impossible as it might seem I’m going to tell you just how many toothpicks you moved!” As you say this, look for your secretly marked toothpick and counting it as ‘one’ count how many there are to the right end (your right) of the row and then tell them that’s how many were moved! NOTE: if the marked toothpick ends up on your far right side, then they moved only one. If the marked toothpick is still on the far left, that means they moved all ten toothpicks!
19.THEE PEPPER TRICK
For this trick, you will need some water, some soap, some regular pepper, a dish (not included in this set). Before the performance, secretly rub soap on your fingers. To begin, put some water in a dish, and then put some regular pepper, Ask a volunteer from the audience to try to separate the pepper and the water by hand. Of course it will be impossible. Now when you put your fingers (with soap) in to the water the pepper will magically separate to the edge of the dish.
20.WATER AND ICE
For this trick, you will need a cup, a wand, a sponge, some water and some ice cubes (not included). Before the performance, place the sponge into the cup at the bottom, and put some ice cubes inside the cup on top of the sponge. You need to find a sponge that will fit well in the cup so that it will not fall out when you tilt the cup upside down. To begin, pour a little bit of water in the cup, wave your wand over the cup and say “Hocus-Pocus!”.The water will be soaked and contained in the sponge. Now tilt the cup and pour out the ice cubes. It appears that you have magically turned the water into ice cubes.
21.COLOR VISION
You will need 5 pieces of paper and a pencil for this trick (not included in this set). Before the performance, you will need to secretly write the words red, yellow, green, pink and blue individually on 5 pieces of paper. Now you need to fold up the 5 pieces of paper separately and place them one in each of your pockets located through out your pant, shirt or jacket. You must remember which written color is in which pocket. To begin, you will ask a volunteer to select one of the 5 colors: red, yellow, green, pink and blue; and think about that color he/she chooses in mind. Ask them what color they have selected; when the volunteer tells you the color he/she selected, you will magically pull the correct piece of paper show the color that he/she chose from one of your pockets. Tell him/her that you had magically predicted his/her chosen color.