Tag: 1000 pieces

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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!!

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Favorite Things

This weekend, I put together another puzzle from Elena Essex. It’s a 1000-piece called Favorite Things, and the artist is Mara Penny.

I received this puzzle last Christmas from my ex-husband. It’s one that I knew I wanted the moment I saw it; it’s my favorite type of puzzle – an assortment of images arranged by color.

Yesterday, I did the border and the pink, red, orange, yellow, and green sections. Then today I did the purple and blue. It was super fun to put together and very good quality.

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Christmas Cornucopia

For my second Christmas puzzle of the season, I did Christmas Cornucopia from Elena Essex. It’s a 1000-piece puzzle with beautiful colors and gold foil accents.

This is also my second Elena Essex puzzle to put together. The first one was Woodland Magic, which was an absolute dream to do.

This puzzle was harder than the mushroom puzzle as there weren’t as many different colors. It was definitely doable, however, once I hunkered down and started picking out the different textures in each color.

The only downside of this puzzle was the border. There were so many false fits, and I really struggled to get the border completed. I had to move things around multiple times and was very far into the puzzle before I got it completely done.

How far I got before the border was done

I did love the colors and the gold foil accents. I also appreciated how well the pieces held together. It was very easy to move sections around.

Finished puzzle

I highly recommend this puzzle for a fun holiday experience.

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Puzzled Cats

Puzzled Cats is a charming 1000-piece puzzle from a company called Two Bird Press. I had it on my Amazon wish list for several months but kept putting it off because it was a little pricier than I normally do.

Then another puzzle on my wish list that I really liked disappeared from the list. After that, I decided to go ahead and get this one while it was still available.

It was a very enjoyable build. The pieces were a tight fit, maybe even too tight. Sometimes, I had to force them together, even when I knew they were in the right place. The image was super cute, though, and it was just the right level of difficulty.

Puzzled Cats