Dear Magicians,


I posted this on The Workers forum, but realized afterward that Gaffed & Funky was more appropriate.


I'd like to create a collection of colorful vintage jokers (the kind with harlequins and jesters in body-suits, often holding a stick with a jester-head at the top, wearing a three-horned hat, and up to zany antics) that I can use in my card tricks. Bicycle decks show a King riding a bicycle, which is cute but not what I want, and Tally Ho show a gentleman horseman, which doesn't appeal to me.


There are lots of cards of the sort that I like on eBay, but the problem is that they're bridge-sized, whereas I want to use Poker-sized. I'm wondering if anyone can suggest an easy way that I could incorporate bridge-sized jokers into poker-sized cards. I'm not handy, so I would need a really easy method, or a suggestion of who might do the work for me.


I could glue a bridge-sized joker to a blank poker card, but then I'd have a sort of gaffed thick card (or at least partially thick). Or I could scan the bridge sized card and print the image onto a blank poker card, but, from what I've read on other threads, the ink would smear unless I first removed the coating from the blank card. (And then reappied the coating after printing, I guess.)


Another possibility I thought of: scan the cards and print their images on some kind of appropriate, not-to-thick paper, or thin cardboard. Cut out the printed images to match the size and shape of a bicycle card, and glue the paper to a blank bike. Then treat the paper on the face so that it slides smoothly.



Another solution would be to try to find the kind of joker I like in poker size, but I haven't seen such a thing for sale. And even then I'd have to glue a bicycle back to the original back if I wanted to use a bicycle deck for an effect, thus creating a thick card.



I'd also be happy with modern cards that were in the old style that I described. There apparently used to be a whole deck of bicycle-backed jokers which were replicas of old jokers from various decks in Bicycle's history. But it seems to be out of print and unavailable, and I haven't seen what the cards looked like in any case.



I'd love to hear people's ideas of how to proceed.


Thanks,


Bob

Lybrary.com has playing card stock you can print on.

https://www.lybrary.com/how-to-make-your......680.html


Dave

Thanks, Dave. This looks like a great book. Just to be clear, the link you sent brought me to the book How To Make Your Own Playing Cards, not to a way to order card stock from Lybrary. Does the book contain instructions on how to order card stock from Chris?

You can order the card stock from lybrary.com as well.

https://www.lybrary.com/cards-diy-playin......527.html

Take a look at the 10 sheets for $20US, or more as you wish.


Dave

Perfect -- thanks again, Dave.



Bob

Take the design you want to use, and reverse the image in Photoshop or another similar program. You can print it out onto a T-shirt transfer paper and then iron it onto a blankface card. Ray Haddad mentioned how to do this in Genie magazine, and I believe the process is described by him at lybrary.com under free articles.

Thanks, MudMedic. I found the article.


Bob