Your audience will think that you can tell the colour of a crayon by just holding it.

For this trick you´ll need a box of wax crayons, preferably short, chunky crayons without any paper around them but don´t worry any kind will do.

Hand the box to a member of the audience and then turn your back on them. Ask the volunteer to pick any crayon out of the box and hold it up so that audience can see what colour it is. Then ask the volunteer to make sure the box of other crayons is kept out of sight and whilst keeping your back to the audience place your hands behind you back so that the volunteer can put the chosen crayon into your hands without you seeing it.

Turn around facing the audience and start acting as though you are deep in thought holding the crayon firmly in your hands, close your eyes so that the audience believes you´re sensing the colour of the crayon. Whilst you are doing this you need to scrape the crayon with one of your thumbnails so that a lump of crayon gets stuck under the thumbnail of one of your hands.

Keep feeling the crayon and act as though you need to concentrate even harder by bringing the hand with lump of crayon under the thumbnail to your forehead. Don´t forget to keep the hand with crayon in it behind your back!

With your hand on your forehead concentrating take a good look at your thumbnail so you can see the colour of the chosen crayon and then announce the colour to your audience. Enjoy the applause.

Learn this trick and you can amaze an audience by looking as though you can make yourself float off the ground. Remember to practice the trick first and never reveal the secret!

Stand about four feet (slightly over one metre) away from your audience. Tell them that you can levitate but that you can only do it once because it makes you tired; so they must watch carefully. It’s not really tiring but if you keep showing the trick to the same audience they will find out what you are really doing.

Turn around so that you are facing away from the audience but make sure no-one can see the front of your left foot. Tell everyone to look at your feet.

Take a deep and noisy breath.

Put your heels together.

Bend your knees slightly.

Stick your arms outwards.

Get ready to tip-toe on your left foot.

Then all at the same time: unbend your knees, tip-toe on your left foot and slowly raise your right foot off the ground.

Then after a few seconds land on the ground with little jump and spread you feet apart.

Try to look a little out off breath and, of course, take a bow. Do this well and everyone will think you really can float!

Tips:
If anyone moves in closer when you are pretending to float, land straight away and tell your audience that the movement broke your concentration. Long, dark trousers and dark shoes or trainers make the trick look better.

With an ordinary pack of cards you’ll be able to identify a card picked by any member of an audience.

With this trick you won’t be pretending to read minds but making it appear as though you can flip a card over even though it’s snugly tucked-up in deck.

Let your audience examine an ordinary pack of cards, with no jokers or any other extra cards. Invite the audience to shuffle the cards and pass them on to whoever they wish. It doesn’t matter how many people shuffle the cards but get them back before too long, as you’re performing a magic act, not co-ordinating a card shuffling convention.

When you get the cards back do not shuffle them, make a point of not interfering with the deck of cards but do keep holding it face down. Next, ask for a volunteer from the audience. Whilst people are looking around at eachother subtly turn the bottom card of the deck facing upwards; remember the rest of the deck is facing down.

Ask the volunteer to join you in front of the audience. Carefully spread the deck a little and ask the member of the audience to pick a card. Once the card is chosen tell the volunteer to show the card to the audience but not to let you see it.

Whilst the card is being shown to everyone else: turn the deck over so that the one card in the deck is facing down and the rest are facing up. The volunteer then needs to place their chosen card back in the deck. You’ll need to keep the deck in a nice, neat stack while the card is put back in the deck.

Next subtly, so no one can see, turn the deck over so that 50 of the cards are facing down, the bottom one is facing up and the chosen card is also facing up.

Finally time for the reveal. Place the deck on a table in a neat pile. Say some magic words and tap the deck at the same time . Then carefully spread out the deck so that the chosen card is revealed face-up and the rest of the deck is face down. Great care is needed that the face up card at the bottom of the deck does not get shown and noticed by the audience.

Take a bow and subtly make sure all the cards are the right way around or hide the deck away in a jacket pocket.

If you’re wearing a jacket or long sleeved shirt then a pen and a handkerchief (clean one please – you are a performer on stage after all) are all you need to convince an audience that you can make things disappear.

Show the pen to the audience; let them examine it, even write with it, to prove it’s an ordinary pen. Do the same with the handkerchief; show both sides, crumple it up. Even let the audience examine it closely, so let’s hope it’s really clean!

Next , hold the pen in one hand pointing it upwards. Then drape the handkerchief over the pen and cover the whole of the hand holding the pen.

With all this movement going on: it’s time for the trick. Let the pen slip down your sleeve and stick your finger upwards. With the handkerchief covering your hand, your finger will look like the pen.

With your free hand grab your upwards pointing finger through the handkerchief and tell your audience that the pen is still there. Then say some magic words: “Magic Mister Murray, can conjure smells after curry!” will do but feel free to make up your own incantation.

Finally, pull the handkerchief away from your hand and immediately spread open your hand to reveal an empty hand and a disappeared pen.

Sorry, but I’ve yet to learn any subtle or magical way of making the pen appear again!