Make Custom Gaff Playing Cards - CHEAP

Make your own custom playing card faces on popular brands for magic tricks/business /weddings/fun with little to no cost. Visit http://magic.phatus.com for plenty of resources on this.

Step 1 Materials and Prep

Things you may need.''...
Inkjet Printer, possibly a laser, (I have not tried this as I know that the heat will bend the card more however if someone decides to use a laser printer, please post in the comments how It worked out for you.)
Tape | Paper | rubbing alcohol or pencil eraser | tissue or cotton swab
Blank Playing Card - If you don't have one its ok, I will show you how to make one below.
There are a number of ways to achieve this goal.
1) Is to follow the directions in the Video Which is to take Rubbing Alcohol to a Card with a tissue to blank the card. (Aces other than spade usually work great as they do not have much area to blank)
2) Take the same approach as the alcohol method but use a pencil eraser instead of alcohol (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - This will also help preserve that nice smooth finish to the card.)
3) Purchase a blank deck of cards - MOST RECOMMENDED - you can pick these up anywhere from 5 to 7 bucks online and they are smooth as silk - I will include more info on where to get blank cards at the end of the instructable - Visit Phatus.com for more.

Comments

[shadow wave rider]

can you post a method of doing this on windows paint. i dont want to buy photoshop and only use it once. also, my inkjet uses watersolour in. any way of getting around them being smuged. please post something.

[tinker234]

wow i love this i might make some with my symbol on them as a joke

[jcandy]

I tried making my own cards but took too much effort and then found that they do them online for you. I now use http://www.printerstudio.com/unique-ideas/custom-playing-cards.html. Quality is better than I thought it would be as they're completely bendable.

[Panther]

The link no longer appears to work, which is sad, as a working mentalist/magician I really wanted to see what kind of things people came up with on the site. of course I guess this posting hasn't been looked at in a couple years so it makes sense.

If you have a newer resource link, I would love to see it.

[Antikythera]

Does the printed image stick to the card well? cause for packet tricks there can be alot of shuffling.

[dany man148]

thank  you so mutch for this!!! i thought that you cold olny take the ink off with a eraser or nail polish remover... lol... i made some cool fake star wars trading card game card with this... thank you !!! fave

[Mr Guy]

what kind of editing software did you use?

[pyro222]

I used an old version of Paint Shop Pro but anymore I just use The Gimp

[denniSinned]

i got my blank deck of cards for only $2 at the dollar tree. (i had to buy 2 of them because one deck only has half of the cards blank, so yea)

[volquete]

i just got a street magic package,and it came with an awesome deck of card:bycycle shadow masters edition. awesome deck

[wenpherd]

are the cards you use texturd or smooth?

[pyro222]

Assuming that you are referring to the air cushions, like that of bee and bicycle cards, the one in the video is textured, but I found that the smooth finish of Aviator cards yielded the best results. They are easier to re-finish as well.

[RaisedByRobots]

cool, I'm going to try it!

[fldhkygoalie]

tried it....doesnt work. any help =S

[Ph3nomin0n]

If theyre cheap dollars store kind I find that using rubbing alcohol to fade out the ink then a clean tissue to dry it THEN erasing it works perfect.

[finfan7]

Try a different set of cards. Some companies make their cards differently than others.

[mason0190]

Id probly just invert the colours so mmy card looks like this

[finfan7]

Bicycle already sells that deck. You could just save yourself the time and buy the deck for less money than the time would be worth.

[Tomatogrower]

wow thank you very much :)

[pyro222]

My pleasure :D

I also have a PDF for download at my site that goes into a little more detail as well at http://magic.phatus.com/make-magic-gaff-cards/ if anyone is interested and some cheesy designs at http://magic.phatus.com/make-magic-gaff-cards/gaff-cards-gallery/ for folks to use
Enjoy my friends.

[amadoraa123]

very awesome

[fldhkygoalie]

.....is it the cards im using? it wont come off! im using plastic coated cards so i think it might be. is this the reason?

[pyro222]

If you could post the exact brand name and series I could most likely pinpoint the problem. I imagine that a plastic card or even a plastic coat could give you some troubles though. So far I have only done this with Bicycle 808s and Aviator cards.

[littlegandhi1199]

I took a full deck of cards and erased the Aces Then i put a pic of my mom with a chore above it for mother's day! Check It

[pyro222]

Nice! Very Creative

[MARTINDWIGHT]

yes!! really smooth. thanks

[GorillazMiko]

Really really smart idea. I might do this, with some really cool design on it or something. Cool Instructable!