Tips and hints to help you become a successful magician:

• Practice in front of a mirror so you can see the trick as your audience will.  Practice lots!

• Practice the "patter" as well as the trick.  Figure out before hand what you want to say during the show.  Good patter will help distract the audience just enough to keep them from guessing how you've pulled off your magical feats!  Here's a start for you:

  I have a magic trick for you.
  It should be lots of fun.
  Pay very close attention,
  And guess how it is done!

• Resist the temptation to tell how the trick worked... keep them guessing and they'll be even more impressed with your show.

• Never do the same trick more than once for the same audience.  It makes it too easy for the audience to guess how it was done.

• Control the seating arrangements...  Some of the tricks require that the people be looking straight at you.  Have the audience remain seated throughout the show.

• Wherever you can, borrow the objects from the audience...  Coins, pencils, napkins, etc.  Borrowing from the audience makes it seem like the magician hasn't had time to do anything sneaky to the item.  This makes everything seem more magical!

• Lovely Assistant:  a lot of the card tricks (or any other mind reading type tricks) work well using a magical puppet or stuffed animal as your assistant.  Try putting on an entire show where you aren't a magician at all...  Instead claim that you bought a puppet from an old gypsy woman and it turned out to be magic (you can make up a cool story to use as your patter).  Have the puppet or stuffed animal "whisper" the answers into your ear.  Having a puppet do all the work, may keep you from getting stage fright!  I've included the puppet image on all the tricks that will work well this way.

Now...  On with the show!