Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Balloons is a 300-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and it is part of their Puzzle Moments line. Normally I would be wary of an image that had so many light areas, but it is not really a problem with such a small piece count.
I do like this image, but I didn’t think the quality was quite as good as the other Ravensburgers I have done.
Joyful Aviary is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Olivia Gibbs. This image is a bit different than what I have seen before from her, but I liked all the colorful birds and had been wanting some lower piece counts to mix in with my other puzzles.
I actually ended up doing this for the puzzle challenge I am currently participating in. The challenge has a new clue every week for 10 weeks. For the first four weeks, there was just one clue, but on week 5, the mystery split into two paths with different clues for each path. Once you picked a path, you had to follow that path and its clues through the rest of the challenge.
For week 5, I had a choice of snow/mountains or desert/marketplace. I chose snow and that’s why I did the Charles Wysocki puzzle Hickory Haven Canal. For week 6, the clue for my team was tropical bird, and the other team had bridge. This puzzle fit the tropical bird theme and then some!
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!
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.
I have done a bunch of puzzles over the last week, and several of them feature flowers, so I thought I would post them all together.
Wildflowers of North America is a 1000-piece puzzle from BBOLDIN, which is basically a generic Chinese brand you can find on Amazon. I knew this image might be a bit challenging for me, but I also knew that these brands print letters on the back of their puzzles so that you can sort the pieces into several sections to make it easier.
I enjoyed doing this one. It is so satisfying to do each section, and I especially like all the words at the top and bottom. This is very similar to a mushroom puzzle that I did a while ago.
Fantasy Gardens is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Liselle Larsen. This was a quick, easy puzzle. I usually reserve the term puzzle snack for 200 pieces or less, but this went so fast that it felt like one. The image is well-designed for doing a puzzle.
City Garden Rainbow Retreat is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cross & Glory, who use AI to generate their art. I fell in love with this image the first time I saw it and was so happy to be able to get it.
I love the abstract nature of this image. Because it has somewhat of a rainbow pattern, I did sort by color up front. Usually, I just pull out the edges and flip the rest of the pieces over and put them in sorting trays, but it definitely helped to do more sorting for this one. This puzzle was on the more difficult side, but it was never overwhelming, and I felt like I made slow but continual progress.
I love that I have had so much time to puzzle the last couple of weeks. My stash of puzzles to do was getting pretty big, and it feels good to make a dent in it and do some of the puzzles I have been looking forward to.
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!
As part of the puzzle haul I got from the friend from church who moved away recently, I got a set of Ceaco puzzles labeled “10 Seaside Jigsaw Puzzles.” I ended up doing six of them before I got tired of them and decided to stop. I know I could do the others later, but I don’t think I will.
The puzzles I did included two 100-piece puzzles and four 300-piece puzzles. I did not do the four 500-piece puzzles. Here are pictures of the ones I completed:
The Mother’s Day Picnic is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Jane Wooster Scott. I find her images charming and enjoyed putting together this puzzle.
Check out my puzzle haul! A woman from my church is moving and gave me a bunch of puzzles she didn’t want to take with her. Of course, I said I’ll take them all! I’ll do the ones I like and them pass them all to other puzzlers.
The first ones I chose to do were the set of Thomas Kinkade puzzles. They were from Ceaco, and there were 3 of them. I have never done any of his artwork and thought I would give these a try even though they are not my normal style.
I had a pleasant time doing them. The largest one was a bit tricky because there was a lot more sky and also the border has a lot of false fits. I had to mess around with the border a few times to get it right.
In So Many Words 