If you want to provide some unusual entertainment for your next party, consider amazing your friends with a few magic tricks. Adding magic to the party works for large or small gatherings and can break the ice with guests who don't know one another. You can find a professional magician in the paper or at the Chamber of Commerce, but if hiring a magician is not within your budget, there are a couple of simple tricks you can learn and use to enchant your guests. Performer Brian Gillis originally became involved with magic as a way to capture his students' attention when he was teaching math. He says that magic is probably the most versatile form of entertainment because it can be done anywhere with any number of people. His favorite tricks are those sleight-of-hand illusions that never fail to make an obvious impression on his audience. Gillis shares a couple of these with Party at Home host Heidi Bohay. Disappearing Shaker In this trick Gillis covers a salt shaker with a napkin and tells his audience that he will make a quarter penetrate the table by tapping it with the shaker. The surprise comes when the shaker disappears instead. Follow these steps for your own flawless performance. - Sit at a table and explain to your audience that you will make a quarter disappear by tapping it with a salt shaker that you are covering with a paper napkin. Make sure to wrap the napkin over the top of the shaker so that the shape is retained (figure A).
- Explain to your audience that you will make the quarter pass through the table, and tell them to remember if it's on heads or tails to direct their focus on the quarter.
- While their attention is focused on the quarter, let the shaker slip out from under the napkin, into your lap (figure B). The napkin retains the shape of the shaker, leading the audience to believe that it is still there.
- Smash the empty napkin on top of the quarter, and the shaker has "vanished" in front of your audience. The effect is heightened because a larger object has disappeared.
Torn and Restored Napkin Gillis tears a paper napkin into small pieces, sprinkles it with "magic dust" from his pocket and unfolds the napkin, which is now whole again. When his other hand is checked for the torn pieces, another whole napkin is found. The beauty of this trick is that you supposedly show your audience the trick, and then they are fooled again. The secret is that three napkins are used. - Ball up one napkin and hide it in your hand. Hide another in your pocket.
- Tear the third napkin in front of your audience, and while you crumple the pieces into a ball, switch them with the hidden napkin in your hand.
- Reach into your pocket with the hand that now holds the torn napkin pieces, and leave them in there while you bring out the whole napkin and hide it in your hand that sprinkles the magic dust.
- Explain to your audience that you will show how another napkin was used for the trick, then surprise them by showing them the whole napkin in your other hand, which they assumed would be torn.
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