Tag: 1000 pieces

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Ice Cream Dream (Repeat)

I have recently made a couple of new friends at the church I attend now, and both of them enjoy doing puzzles. My friend Jessyca came over to do a puzzle and enjoyed it so much she came back two more times so we could finish it together!

I let her choose the puzzle, and she picked Ice Cream Dream by Lego because she likes Legos. It’s a 1000-piece puzzle that I got as a birthday gift a couple of years ago, and I had done it in January of 2023.

We took the time to sort by color and did each ice cream tub as a mini puzzle before putting them together and filling in the border and in-between pieces. You can see our progress in the three sessions in the photos below.

I had such a good time puzzling with a friend. And this weekend, I’m going to Brick Fest with her to see the actual thing!

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Travel

Travel is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cavallini, which is a new-to-me brand. It comes in a cylinder and has a cloth drawstring bag to hold the pieces. There was also a nice poster.

I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. I am very drawn to grid puzzles like this, and I also love putting together words in puzzles. It was easy to sort the pieces by color, and then I just worked on whatever caught my eye.

What destination on this puzzle would you most like to visit? My initial answer was London, but upon further reflection, I think Australia or New Zealand would be amazing!

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Edible Mushrooms

Edible Mushrooms is a 1000-piece puzzle that my son gave me for Christmas/birthday last year. It was one I had on my wish list, however, I had forgotten exactly what the image looked like and the box didn’t look fun or inspiring at all. I wanted to do a 1000-piece puzzle recently and decided to do this one and just get it over with.

I was surprised when I opened it and looked at the poster and saw that the image was actually much better than I had guessed based on the box design. It did have some solid-color pieces scattered around the puzzle, which I knew could take a bit more time to do. When I started sorting the pieces, I noticed that the back had letters printed on it. This is the first puzzle I have done that was separated by sections like that, so I decided to go ahead and sort by the letters on the back of the pieces. There were six different sections once I had sorted them:

The picture was so fun to put together. The fact that I was doing it in sections made it fly by, and the solid color pieces were no problem at all since I was only doing a few at a time. The puzzle pieces seemed to have a plastic coating with a white paper backing. They clicked together in a very satisfying way and held together quite well.

Here is the first section to give you an idea how big each one was:

My favorite part was the legend at the bottom – words are so fun to put together. I did really enjoy all of the mushrooms, too, though. It was just a great puzzle all around! I think the next time I do this puzzle I will mix all of the pieces together and just use the letters on the back if I get stuck at all.

I guess the lesson here is not to judge a book by its cover, or a puzzle by its box! I have actually put a couple more of this style puzzle on my wish list already.

Note: I have seen this item sold under a couple of different brand names on Amazon. The one I think my son bought for me was BBOLDIN.

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Bibliophile Book Club Darlings

I got this puzzle a few weeks ago from my local puzzle box. It is by Galison, which is a brand I have done quite a bit and enjoyed. The subject matter is also right up my alley, as I am a great bookworm! It is 1000 pieces, and the artist is Jane Mount.

I really enjoyed putting together the book spines. It was very easy to sort and build each one. Unfortunately, I got totally stuck once those were done. After I had put in every piece that had even a tiny bit of color on it, I was left with 126 completely white pieces. I thought about at least doing the border but was running into enough false fits that I wouldn’t be sure it was right even if I had finished it.

So as much as I hate to do it, I had to call it quits on this puzzle. I can’t even imagine how long it would have taken me to complete it. I couldn’t even sort by shape as the pieces were all the same shape.

Here’s a picture of what I got done:

Do you ever give up on a puzzle?

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Love Stamps (Repeat)

In honor of Valentine’s Day month, I decided to redo a puzzle I had done a couple of years ago. Love Stamps is a 1000-piece puzzle from White Mountain, and it is a collage of U.S. stamps with the theme of love. The artist is Lois B. Sutton.

This was a really easy puzzle to do. Even though it was 1000 pieces, it took me less than 3 hours to complete. I think it helped that I had done it before, but also it was very easy to sort and then put together each section.

Another reason I redid this one is for the Winter Bingo I am doing for a Facebook challenge. It fulfilled the Romantic square on the board. I only have three squares left, and I will have gotten all 6 bingo entries from the contest!

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Hawaiian Food Truck Festival

Such a fun puzzle! I got this one from my son for my birthday in 2022 and just got around to it last week. It’s called Hawaiian Food Truck Festival, and it’s a 1000-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games.

I enjoyed all of the fun details in this one. The border came together pretty easily, but then when I was working on the sky, I realized there were several sections in the wrong place. It took quite a while to get it straightened out.

Towards the end, I had to start relying heavily on the poster to figure out where individual pieces went. At the very end, even that wasn’t working, and I had to sort by shape to place the last few pieces.



Even though it’s a very busy puzzle, I still really enjoyed it.

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Winnie the Pooh

Winnie the Pooh is a 1000-piece Ravensburger Disney puzzle that I got at a local bookstore to use for the Winter Bingo I am participating in. It fit the squares of Birthday or Balloons (it had both!) and Disney or Cartoon (with bonus entry for using Pooh or Tinkerbell).

It was a really fun puzzle to put together. The quality was great all around, although of course there was a lot of puzzle dust and no reference poster. But the difficulty level was just right and I didn’t get stuck at any point.

Such a cute image! I loved the amount of detail in the puzzle. There was a lot going on, but it wasn’t chaotic at all. Highly recommend!

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Plant Life

Plant Life by Galison is a 1000-piece panoramic puzzle that I got from the local puzzle box. The artist is Julie Seabrook Ream. I chose it because it was a very pretty image, although I wasn’t sure how hard it would be. 

Well, it turned out to be very hard!! It was pretty slow going right from the beginning. The first day I did the border and parts of the yellow, orange, red, and pink sections. I wish I had kept track of my time, but I do know that I spent a lot of hours even though it was only four days of puzzling.

The second day I moved onto the light green and some of the purple. There were a lot of dark pieces that were hard to see, which was made worse by the glare on the pieces.

The third day I filled in more of the sections I had already worked on and started the green section. The green section was definitely the hardest – it was the largest section and had the most similar pieces.

On the fourth day, I think I worked for about ten hours and I finished the puzzle. At one point, with about 200 pieces left, I seriously considered quitting, but I persevered and got it done.

I am glad I kept going and finished the puzzle. It is such a beautiful image. I considered framing it, but frames this size on Amazon run about $80, and even on Ebay or Etsy, the best price I could find was $70. So I ended up taking it apart and it is going to go back to the puzzle box for someone else to tackle.

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The Alchemist’s Home

The Alchemist’s Home is a 1000-piece puzzle from the brand eeBoo, and the artist is Vasilisa Romanenko. This is a new-to-me brand. I had gotten it a while ago and thought I might save it for Halloween, but then I included it in a group of puzzles where I was choosing a random puzzle to do for a puzzle challenge and it got picked!

I was a bit intimidated at first due to the amount of detail going on, but it was actually a lot of fun to do. Each room has a different wallpaper and floor/rug, so that made it easy to sort out the pieces.

I enjoyed all of the different things going on in this puzzle, and I really liked all of the ghosts that appear in the various rooms and even outside the house.

The quality was great as well. The pieces were a nice size and fit together well. I had just a couple of false fits on the border, but it didn’t take long to sort those out.

I am looking forward to doing more from this brand, including more from the Alchemist’s series!

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Whisper of Cactus

Whisper of Cactus is a 1000 piece puzzle from a brand that is new to me, Antelope. The artist is Lynn Weilin. I actually won this puzzle a little over a year ago from a YouTube giveaway at The Casual Puzzler. I had been putting it off because it was a little intimidating with all of the green, but I pulled it out on New Year’s Eve Day to give it a try.

It did turn out to be a hard puzzle, but I ended up finishing it in one sitting. I thought about taking a break after I finished each of the harder groups of pieces, but then I just kept going. I think it helped that I started rewatching Gray’s Anatomy while I was puzzling; that sort of kept me engaged.

I started out with the colorful flowers, then did the maroon ground. After that, I did the blue cacti, and then started tackling the various shades and textures of the green cacti. I’m not sure how many hours I spent on it exactly, but I finished up around 2 am on New Year’s Day! Way to ring in the New Year!!