Close-up Mat

This looks like a mouse mat for a computer. It has a rubber base and a spongy felt top. This makes working with cards a lot easier than working on other surfaces such as a table that’s made out of wood. With a close-up mat you can go anywhere you want and whatever the surface is you will still be able to work with your cards easily as you can just put the close-up mat down. These close-up mats come in loads of different shapes, colours and sizes. This will depend on your tasted and which one you think looks best for the certain trick or act you’re performing.

Silks, Thumb Tips & Cups and Balls

Silks

Silks also can come in different colours and sizes and this totally depends on the type of trick your doing. Obviously if you need to cover up something big then you will need to buy silks that are a big size. Also depending on what you are covering up, you might want a certain colour. If the object you’re covering is red, it might be worth getting a red silk unless you want a contrast and want a different coloured silk.

Cups and Balls

Cups and Balls also come in different shapes, sizes and colours. Also they come in different material. You would pick the best that suits you. You might be able to work better with solid copper cups than plastic cups. The same goes for the balls. There are different materials and sizes. You would pick the best for you. Most people go for the classic sponge balls as these are easy to palm and keep hidden. Some people go for hard balls because they might find that the weight is making it hard for them so they use a lightly weighted ball. Sponge balls are really light and they could find it hard handling them.

Thumb Tip

There are all different sized thumb tips too. The main reason for this is that people have different sized thumbs. There are two main types of thumb tips and these are the hard tip and the soft tip. You can guess by their names what the difference is between them. Usually when buying a thumb tip, you buy one that is a little bigger than your thumb, this is because you will need to conceal something in there and you will need a little extra space to do this. This links into the silks section because you don’t want to buy a too big silk because you might find you can’t get the whole silk in and your thumb as well.

Playing Cards

Playing cards can come in lots of different shapes and sizes. The main two types are Bridge size and Poker size. The Bridge sized cards are approximately 56mm x 87mm (2in x 31/2in) and these are more common in Europe. The poker size cards are approximately 63mm x 88mm (21/2in x 31/2) and these are more common for most card tricks you will probably see and obviously for the casinos.

There are loads of different gimmicked cards you can get and these include marked cards, double faced and double backed. I recommend you looking into card splitting and you understand about all sorts of different gimmicks you can make with cards such as having half the card looking like the back and the other half looking like the front and this is just on one side of the card.

There are also a lot of different card designs you can get as well and this depends how much you look around to see what you can find.

There are two main colours used with cards which are the primary colours red and blue. There is another colour which is black and this comes on the Tiger Deck. Also you can find other colours or even get your cards personalised to your taste.

More to come in Magician's Equipment Part 2.

BlueWaterArticles.com: - Magicians Equipment Part 1

About the Author

Milson Magic

Learn Real Magic ~ http://www.Learn-Real-Magic.com