Tag: 1000 pieces

Posted on

Passing Through

The puzzle is called Passing Through, and it’s part of the Hometown Gallery series from MasterPieces. The artist is Bonnie White. This is a 1000 piece puzzle that I received as a Christmas gift last year from my mother-in-law, who was my Secret Santa in the family gift exchange.

For the gift exchange, we each write down three things we want and then pick a random slip from the basket to choose who we will buy for. I said I would like a 500-1000 piece puzzle, but didn’t specify beyond that, so it was interesting to see what was picked out for me. She actually got me two, and this is the first one I have done. I did enjoy it, but this year I do plan on saying which puzzles I want since there are so many on my wish list!

Here’s the puzzle after a couple of short sessions working on it:

The balloons and the houses were the easiest part. After that I did the water, the people, and the animals. Then remaining path, grass/trees, and sky were a bit harder, and they required a bit of shape sorting, but I eventually got them done. Here’s the finished puzzle:

Unfortunately, there was one piece missing. I can’t guarantee I didn’t lose it somehow, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. There was also one piece that was bent, which made the pieces in that area lay a bit wonky. The overall quality of the puzzle wasn’t fantastic, but it wasn’t terrible either.

Here’s where the missing piece was:

All in all, this was a fun puzzle to do. Now on to the next one!

Posted on

The World of Jane Austen

My most recent puzzle was The World of Jane Austen from Laurence King Publishing. It was a 1000-piece puzzle featuring many of the buildings and people from Austen’s novels. The artist was Barry Falls.

This was a very difficult puzzle to do. It was hard from the beginning to the end. Part of that was because all the pieces were the same shape – 2 in and 2 out – and they had an extremely loose fit. The fit made it impossible to pick up sections and move them around. Anytime I wanted to move a section, I had to do it 2 pieces at a time. I also had a fair number of false fits, probably due to both the loose fit and the similar shapes.

Another thing that made this puzzle difficult was the image. It was so dense with details that it was hard to find the pieces you were looking for. It took several sessions of intense puzzling to get it finished. I am glad I stuck with it though because I am very happy with the finished product.

Here is the completed puzzle:

And here are some detail shots:

Another thing I wanted to share is my new puzzle mat that I used for the first time with this puzzle. It is big enough to hold a 1500-piece puzzle, and it has a felt backing. It also has a cover that I can place over the puzzle with stretchy pieces that fit over the four corners. This worked great to protect the puzzle when I had to leave my dog alone in the house. It’s so nice to find a solution to that problem!

Here’s a picture of a corner of the mat showing what the cover looks like:

My next puzzle is going to be a super fun and easy one, so stay tuned!

Posted on

Woodland Magic

Last weekend I did the puzzle Woodland Magic by Elena Essex. It’s a 1000 piece puzzle showcasing a variety of mushrooms and toadstools. I absolutely loved this puzzle! The colors are so vibrant, and the design was beautifully done.

I would say this puzzle was low to medium in difficulty. There were only a handful of pieces that were solid cream for the background – almost every piece had some amount of color on it. And the different color sections didn’t have so many pieces that they became overwhelming; plus there were a lot of different textures even within each color.

Here’s a picture of the finished puzzle:

This was such a fun puzzle to do – it was really perfect for me! I have already put more of her puzzles on my wish list.

Posted on

Christmas Carolers

Well, I might have to call this one a puzzle fail, but I’ve gotten as far as I am going to on my newest puzzle. It’s called Christmas Carolers, and it’s a 1000 piece puzzle by Galison. The artist is Louise Cunningham Starling. My son Michael got it for me for my birthday (which is on Christmas Day).

It was a few weeks after Christmas when I decided to start it, but at least it was still winter so there was some snow here and there! I did the border first and started on the houses, but one day my dog Baxter got hold of the puzzle and I lost most of the lower part of the border.

I did the rest of the houses, then the windows with the Christmas trees, then the big Christmas tree, and finally the people down in the snow. Then I was left with only white pieces for the rest of the snowy ground, and it got pretty slow going. After a while, I decided that I had done enough and would call it done.

If I still had the whole border intact, I might have pushed through to finish the entire thing, but with so many pieces already gone, I lost my will to complete it.

I’m not sure which puzzle I am going to do next, as I have several options from the ones I got for Christmas and my birthday.

Posted on

Love Stamps

It’s been a few weeks since I did a puzzle, but this weekend I finished Love Stamps, a 1000-piece puzzle from White Mountain Puzzles. The artist is Lois B. Sutton.

I started it when my friend Renee was over, and we did the border and got a couple of the stamps started. Because of the number of pieces and the size of the puzzle, I didn’t have a lot of room to lay out the pieces or even sort them. I had been looking at some puzzle sorting trays on Amazon for a while and decided to order them to help with this puzzle.

Here’s what the trays look like all stacked together. Using them to sort the pieces was very helpful and made doing the puzzle much more enjoyable.

This was a very fun puzzle to do. It was basically lots of mini puzzles connected with different styles of borders. It was interesting to see the different styles of art used for these stamps throughout the years. I even used it as an educational tool to explain to my son the difference between stamps that had the postage printed on them and the Forever stamps that we use now.