Wine Country Camper is a 750-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Stephanie Peterson Jones. This charming puzzle is part of the Happy Camper series, and I was really happy to get a hold of it. The series is mostly 300-piece puzzles, with just a few larger ones, and I was glad to finally track down a copy of this one at Poshmark (not a place I expected to find puzzles!)
This was such a fun puzzle to do! I love all the colorful elements and different textures. I will definitely be doing this one again and again!
Amsterdam Weekend is a 1000-piece puzzle from Antelope Puzzle, and the artist is Lynn Weilin. I have done a couple other puzzles from this brand, and one of them was actually from this same artist. I continue to be impressed by the quality of this brand, and the image is perfect for me.
I love all the different colors of the buildings and how they each have their own style of windows and doors. The street/park scene in the front is a nice addition so it’s not *all* buildings.
I am totally open to doing more from Antelope, but they just don’t have a lot of images that appeal to me.
How’s this for Christmas in July? The finished puzzle looks really nice, but I actually won’t be keeping this one in my collection. It was my first puzzle from this brand, and the pieces had a weird feel to them that was unpleasant to me.
The colors were also quite muted, which made it more difficult. The tree pieces look much more gray than green, for example. I do like the image, just didn’t enjoy the puzzling experience as much as I usually do.
Sugarplum Village from Puzzle Weekend, 1000 pieces Artist Sabina Fenn
Spring Gnomes and Summer Gnomes are 500-piece puzzles from Bits and Pieces. They are part of a set of 4 puzzles I got a while ago. Last year I did the fall and winter puzzles, and I was recently inspired to finish these ones off.
These two were definitely more fun than the other ones. The fall one was tricky, but the winter one was diabolically hard between the random cut pieces and the many shades of white and gray. The summer puzzle was the easiest of the four because it has more colorful elements that are spread out more throughout the design.
While these are very cute puzzles, I don’t think I would want to do them again, so the set is going in the stack for the next puzzle swap I am able to attend.
The Tree of Hope is a 300-piece puzzle from Pintoo. I have been wanting to try Pintoo puzzles for a while now and was really happy to get my hands on this adorable one. Pintoo is a brand with plastic pieces that snap together in a very satisfying manner. Another interesting thing about them is that the borders are not really part of the puzzle; they are standard for all of their puzzles and fit on any edge piece.
The pieces were pretty small but they snapped together fairly easily. There were only a couple of times that I had to press hard to get them to fit. It was really fun to be able to pick up the whole puzzle and have it be solidly together. And I just love the image!
The clues for weeks 2 and 3 of the puzzle challenge I am doing on Facebook were barnyard animals and musical instruments. I was able to redo puzzles from my shelves for both of them.
Farm Life is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Olivia Gibbs. This one fit the clue for barnyard animals with its cows and chickens.
Koala House Party is a 1000-piece puzzle from eeBoo, and the artist is Uta Krogmann. This one is a house cross section with a music room containing several different instruments.
I enjoyed redoing both of these and am looking forward to the next prompt tomorrow!
Sunset Mountains is a gorgeous 250-piece puzzle from Wentworth Wooden Puzzles. This is my first wooden puzzle, but I have heard only good things about this brand, which is made in Britain. They also are quite a bit pricier than cardboard puzzles, which is one of the reasons I haven’t tried them out before now.
The opportunity to do this puzzle came about because I am a Patreon supporter of a puzzler I follow on YouTube. She decide to offer this as a traveling puzzle to her patrons, so I signed up for it. The puzzle was sent to me by the first person who got it, and I will be sending it to the next person on the list in a few days.
This puzzle was a joy from beginning to end. The pieces are laser-cut into intricate shapes with a few pieces being shaped like identifiable objects – those are called whimsy pieces.
Pile of piecesFirst two pieces put togetherWhimsy pieces
I decided not to start with the border because it was quite dark and I wanted to get more comfortable with how the pieces fit together. So I pulled out the brightest colors first and worked out from there. Once I got about 2/3 finished, I did the rest of the border and then filled in the darkest pieces.
Session 1Session 2Session 3
After I finished the puzzle, I took the whimsy pieces out so that my friend Renee could see them when she came over to my place the other day.
I would love to do more wooden puzzles, but I’m not sure they are in my budget. Either way, I’m really glad that I got to do this one!
Village Toy Shop is a 500-piece puzzle from Sure-Lox, and it is part of their Touch of Frost series. I got this one for free from the friend who recently moved away, and I was very happy to find that it had all of the pieces.
Don’t let the picture fool you, it was quite a bit darker than it looks and very difficult. I knew it was going to be a hard one when the sky and snow were the easy parts, lol! The building pieces were extremely dark and it was slow-going putting them in, but I did eventually get it finished.
Tall Sea Tale is a 300-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Charles Wysocki. There is something about his artwork that just draws me in. A lot of them do have a muted color palette, like this one, which makes me happy it is 300 pieces and not a larger size.
This is one I got in the haul from the friend who was moving away and didn’t want to take her puzzles. It had a ton of dog hair in the box, which was a bit annoying, but the puzzle itself was in good shape and had all of the pieces. There were five extra pieces in the box, however, that were smaller and clearly from another puzzle. I think they might have been part of the puzzle I did a couple of weeks ago that was missing eight pieces. I can’t know for sure because I already got rid of that puzzle, but even if they did go with it, it would still have been missing three pieces. Most people don’t like missing pieces or will only tolerate one or two, so I wouldn’t have tried to swap it anyway.
Garden Goodness is a 1000-piece puzzle from Springbok. This puzzle had its pros and cons. The pieces were a nice thickness, but there were quite a few that weren’t completely cut apart and there was a ton of puzzle dust. There weren’t false fits, but sometimes I had to force the pieces together even when they were in the right spot.
I did enjoy this image. I like grid puzzles a lot; it is satisfying to complete each block of the puzzle. I also like putting together words, and there were a lot of different typestyles represented here. So while I wouldn’t say this is a really good brand, I did have a good time doing it.
