Just thought I would share a great magic moment that happened last week. I was visiting some friends that have small children that are just 'in love' with my magic. We were stopping by there last week, and I knew they would want to see some, so I came prepared with 2 effects. 'Heart to Heart' from Colombini's effect and 'AirTight' by Sankey. I performed the 'Heart to Heart' as an opener to this dual magic display. In this trick, I only performed the first part, in which, the magician has some selected a random card (2 of hearts) and pulls off the hearts pips to be sponge hearts; they liked that one alot. I then went into 'AirTight' by having the one of the spectators to shuffle the cards first. Have them pick a card and sign it. Now for in detail switch of the deck for the prepared deck:

Working at Ralphie's for 2 years I found out this one important factor. The signing of a playing card is truely a strange thing. People are always like 'What?, you want me to sign this card?' and when they sign it they always have a hard time holding it up and hiding the card face of the card out of view. So, I started to do this...I have found that with this statement, "I'll turn away, so I don't see your card". This is a perfect moment and you have about 5-10 seconds to do anything. I simply turn to my right and my right-hand that holds the deck drops down to my side in (relax position), I then put the real deck into my pocket and grab the 'prepared deck' out of my right pocket. I have found in many scernios,whether a restaurant, stand-up close-up show, just around friends. Everyone looks at the spectator signing the card. It's perfect, and I have done it alot. It can work on any card effect with a 'signature on the card' there aren't a lot of those tricks are there? HEHEHE!
Anyways, AirTight went great, the deck went into the balloon and I successfully pulled out 'signed card' and tied off the balloon and gave it out with the deck still in there.

I have read a lot of posts on this forum and other, in which, magicians state that 'AirTight' is hard and 'close-to-impossible' to setup and not pratical. Just for the record, I can prepare my deck in less than 7 secs!! It's very practical, I would just find another switch (like above)rather than the 'large knife' bit that Sankey suggests.

-PS- Remember to always pull the selected card back about a 1 inch or they will see it when you blow it up the balloon. It happened long time ago at the restaurant but it was only a little boy who saw it and I did some proper audience management to get out of it. AirTight, might be one of my favorite effects, right behind the 'Mystery Box', 'Deans' Box' and perhaps 'Card to Ceiling'.