Reading Paul Harris' "Art of Astonishment" was great fun for me and a large part was due to the bits at the back where Paul talks about ideas for effects he has but are too "crazy" for him to try doing. His Phootnotes are also superb.
And as I read through it, I realised that many of his effects came in a flash of brilliance where the gears just clicked and I was wondering if anyone has similar experiences that led up to effects or a better handling of routines etc.
For me, I recently found out I could just barely make my blue-backed cards appear red. It was an accidental discovery, and well it's probably not very practical (and not entirely good), but it's a thought.
One of my more useful "discoveries" was that if I left a spot of common glue overnight in an air-conditioned environment, it actually solidifies into a sheet of rubber/plastic like material that is somewhere stretchy, tough, but not sticky. The best part is that it totally dissolves away when in contact with water. So some ideas that I had was to use this material (super-cooled glue?) to hold coins or small items to the side of a clear bottle that's half-filled with water and one can easily show it empty (shake it around even), but when one gently swirls the water in the bottle so it touches the glue and coin, the coin would slowly and mysteriously appear in the water, coming out of nowhere.
And maybe there are some other applications to it that just requires a more creative mind to think up. (Maybe to hold a spot of dye in place and when water is swirled, the glue melts, releasing the dye and changing the colour of the water?).
So anyway just like to hear whether others on the forum have had inspirational magic moments too.
