The Floating Pencil

Equipment needed: A clear bottle, a pencil, a knife, some really thin fishing line, and a borrowed ring.

Preperation: With the knife, cut a slit in the pencil eraser. Insert one end of the string into the eraser and wrap the other end around a button on your shirt, about mid chest level.

Performance: Hold the pencil eraser side up and ask for a ring from a member of the audience. Put the ring over the pencil so that the string goes through the ring also.

Make up your own patter (mine was about how the ring has your aura on it and wants to be back on your finger). As you pull the pencil away from you the ring will "float" up the pencil.

Play around with this as much as you want. After that, put the ring down and pick up the bottle. insert the pencil eraser side down into the bottle, that way the string is inside the bottle too. Same thing as the ring, as you pull the bottle away from you the pencil will rise. Make up your own patter, whatever you want (mine was about how the pencil now has your aura on it from the ring...whateva). A great clean finish is to pretend that the pencil is getting a lot of "energy" built up and it begins to shake.

Push the bottle far away from you, it will look natural if you have to bottle shaking a lot before you do it. This will cause the pencil to shoot out of the bottle, detaching the string, and your clean. I've succeeded to do this trick in close suroundings, but not that close. If you want to play around with this, wear a very confusing shirt, orange plaid works good.