Magic tricks to liven up a birthday party: Recommended illusions for entertainment and performances
Scenes celebrating the birthdays of family, friends, or a significant other are packed with activities like enjoying a meal and giving gifts.
Some of you may be looking for ideas for entertainment or performances to delight your loved ones.
In this article, we’ve put together a collection of magic tricks that will liven up a birthday party.
Some of them allow for romantic staging, such as ending the magic with a surprise gift.
Use these magic ideas to help make that once-a-year special day feel even more festive.
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Magic tricks to liven up a birthday party: Recommended acts and performances (21–30)
Magic trick where a card appears from a smartphone
It’s a magic trick where you touch a card that appears to be displayed on a smartphone screen and pull it off the screen, and a real card pops out.
The card is hidden behind the phone, and you simply eject it quickly in sync with the on-screen slide—an easy mechanism.
To make it look more mysterious, focus on how you show the card on the phone: for example, take a photo and zoom in so that the slide makes it disappear from the screen.
If you use a dedicated app, you can even make the card move just by moving the device itself, so that’s also recommended.
Magic where juice comes out of a smartphone
Are you familiar with an iPhone app called ichocolatedrink? With just this app and a small paper cup filled with a drink, you can create an effect that makes it look like the beverage is pouring out of your smartphone.
First, download the app and pour a drink into a small paper cup.
Since you’ll need to hold the phone in front of the cup, try to use a cup that’s as flat as possible, and make the spout area especially narrow.
Try to coordinate it so that the drink on the phone screen and the drink in the paper cup disappear at the same time.
Magic tricks that will liven up a birthday party: Recommended acts for entertainment and performances (31–40)
Simple magic you can do with your smartphone
It’s a magic trick where you have someone choose a card from a deck, and when you hold a smartphone camera over that card, it reveals what the card is.
The mysterious part is that it looks as if you can see through the card to its suit and number, and when you actually flip it over, it matches exactly.
The key is how you hold and present the cards, and you also use psychology about where people tend to choose, so you can make them pick a specific card.
Then, if you’ve pre-recorded footage of taking out and putting away that forced card, you can make it look like you’re reading it with X-ray vision.
3 smartphone magic tricks
This is a magic trick where various phenomena happen around a smartphone—something that might feel especially uncanny to people who use their phones every day.
The phone remains steady even in situations where it should lose balance, the numbers on a calculator vanish with just a wave of the hand, a coin passes through—impossible scenarios unfold one after another.
The secret is thread for stabilization, pre-set calculations and a swipe for the calculator, and a coin set up in advance, so proceed in a way that doesn’t reveal the preparation.
If your hands are examined front and back too closely, you’ll be exposed, so keeping a brisk pace is also crucial.
A magic trick where a handkerchief passes through a smartphone screen
It’s a magic trick that looks all the more mysterious because you can see it clearly: a handkerchief slowly passes through a smartphone that doesn’t appear to have any holes.
The handkerchief visible in front of the phone and the one visible behind it move in perfect sync, which is why it really looks like it’s penetrating.
In reality, the handkerchief is rigged with a plastic part that has a hole, and by concealing this piece with the hand while aligning it with the phone, it creates the illusion of penetration even though the handkerchief is merely passing underneath the phone.
The key points are the mechanism itself and the positioning of the hands so the portion of the handkerchief that passes under the phone isn’t visible.
Smartphone magic that’s going super viral
It’s a magic trick where a series of 6s displayed on a smartphone calculator suddenly turns into a series of 9s.
Even after flipping the phone upside down several times, the 6s stay 6s, but in a certain instant they really do flip—and that’s what feels mysterious.
The key is the numerical setup beforehand: you prepare a calculation that adds a series of 3s to a series of 6s so that simply pressing “=” will turn them into a series of 9s.
Then, while moving the phone, you just brush the “=” button for a moment, and you can show the numbers changing.
A simple yet fun Magic Smartphone
It’s a magic trick where, even though you supposedly multiply random numbers, the final result ends up being a sequence of digits related to a birthday.
You have the spectator multiply a two-digit number, then a three-digit number, then a four-digit number in order, but in reality the calculations have nothing to do with the number that appears at the end.
The trick uses a function that gets hidden when the smartphone is held vertically, allowing you to force the number you want to display at the end.
A key point is to use calculations that produce as many digits as possible so the spectator won’t realize the final number doesn’t match the true calculation.