Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Walden’s Manor House is a 1000-piece puzzle from MasterPieces, and the artist is Art Poulin. Poulin is known for his folk art and wanted this image to show the difference between the social classes of the time with this upstairs/downstairs cross-section of a manor house.
It was an enjoyable build of medium difficulty. I got it at the puzzle swap I went to a few weeks ago and was happy to see that all of the pieces were there.
I have acquired several puzzles over the last few weeks that I am excited about doing. Most are new but a couple are used.
I am going to try buying fewer puzzles for the next month or so and try to focus on the ones I already have. That is a really difficult challenge for me, though, so we’ll have to see how I do!
Houses I Read is a 1000-piece puzzle from Magnolia, and the artist is Nihal Cifter. This was on my wishlist for a while, and I finally added it to my collection.
I absolutely loved doing this one. The colors are gorgeous and the art is so quirky. It was so much fun. The sky was a bit hard but not too bad since there were no false fits.
Here are a few closeups:
Into the Jungle is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cobble Hill, and the artist is David Penfound. This is another puzzle I got for free from a friend.
I am very pleased with how it turned out even though there is one piece missing. It provided several sessions of puzzling and is such a nice image. Cobble Hill are a good quality puzzle with a matte/linen finish. Their puzzles are random-cut, which does increase the difficulty of the solve. Towards the end, I was convinced there would be several pieces missing based on the holes I had left to fill, but the odd pieces shapes ended up filling everything except for that one little piece on the left edge.
Paris Windows is a 1000-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Amanda Haley.
I had *so* much fun doing this puzzle. Buildings are my favorite things to puzzle, and this one has a ton of them! It is a very busy image, so a lot of it was pick and place one piece at a time. The quality was mid, but about what you would expect from this brand.
Here are a few closeups:
Garden Allotment is a 1000-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and the artist is Georgia Breeze. When I first encountered this puzzle, it seemed to only be available in the UK, but a few months later, I found it on the Ravensburger US website and ordered it immediately.
I loved this puzzle from beginning to end. The quality of the puzzle is fantastic, as always with this brand, and the art is so inviting and engaging. It has a lot of flowers without being too difficult as flowers sometimes can be, and it even has a few buildings, which I especially love.
Here are a few close ups. So cute!
I just heard of a new puzzle from this artist called Coastal Harbour (shown below). I am really hoping it becomes available in the US as well.
Easter Eggs is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cobble Hill. I had hoped to do it for Easter this year but ran a little bit behind! Oh well, it was still a lot of fun to do.
Cobble Hill puzzles are excellent quality with thick, matte pieces, but I am always amazed at the sheer volume of puzzle dust. I had to get out my mini desktop vacuum after sorting and then again after building the border!
I was a bit nervous about doing another random cut puzzle from this manufacturer after how hard Country Life Crochet was, but Easter Eggs was a lot easier than that one. The details were much easier to pick out on these pieces than the intricate stitching on the other one.
Here are some closeups:
Such a fun, festive puzzle! This might have to be a spring staple for me.
Hue Wormhole is a beautiful puzzle by Wenjia Wang. This is a 1000-piece, circular puzzle from Antelope Puzzles, and it was a lot of fun to put together. I have never done a circular puzzle this big and it actually ended up being too big for the puzzle board I was doing it on. I had to carefully transfer it to foam board to get photos of it.
The colors in this puzzle are gorgeous, and the quality is impressive! The pieces were a nice thickness and fit together well. I started with the border and then worked my way from the outer green and blue up to the purple edge. The greens and orange went pretty well, but then I got a big bogged down in the reds. I kept working it and eventually got to the purples, which were a lot easier.
All in all, this was a joy to assemble and I highly recommend it!
Country Life Crochet is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cobble Hill, and the artist is Jessica White. She has actually created several different crochet puzzle designs, and I have this one and the Halloween one.
The image is amazing! The stitches are so detailed, and they look so real that you would think you could touch them. That level of detail combined with the random cut of the pieces made this puzzle incredibly difficult, though. It took several sessions to finish it, even with my friend Suzanne helping one evening.
Here are some close ups of a few of the blocks:
I only did two of the puzzles from my Completing the Puzzle subscription this month. I decided to put my subscription on hold and they asked that I send the puzzles I had back within 7 days, so I only had time to do two of them. I wasn’t too upset about it, though, because the other two weren’t from my wish list and I didn’t mind skipping them.
The first one was Paris in a Day from eeBoo, and it was 1000 pieces. It was the first rectangular eeBoo puzzle I have seen. This was right up my alley with all the different buildings and windows; it helped that there were so many different colors and textures in the image.
The second puzzle I did was Paris from Galison; it was a 1000-piece puzzle and the artist was Michael Storrings. It was a bear to complete, especially compared to the Paris in a Day puzzle I just did. The building colors were all very similar, as were the windows.
I am always drawn to Michael Storrings artwork, but I hesitate to get his puzzles because they seem hard. I do have a 500 piece that is pretty doable, but I wouldn’t want to do this one again.
Once my puzzles are confirmed back at the warehouse, I am planning to cancel my subscription. I have enjoyed getting to do some puzzles that would have been harder or more expensive to obtain, but I am ready to go back to puzzling whatever I want on a given day instead of having to prioritize the subscription puzzles.
In So Many Words 