Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Flowers is a 500-piece round puzzle from Ravensburger’s Circle of Colors line. The artist is Sherry Lee. It was a super-easy and satisfying puzzle to do. I have been a big fan of rainbow puzzles since I started this hobby, and this one was so pretty!
I recently got this set of Disney puzzles from the puzzle box near my house. It has 5 puzzles in it, which don’t have names. The brand is Ceaco. I thought the images looked like fun to do.
I started with this 300-piece image of Mickey and Minnie with Pluto outside under an umbrella. It came together pretty quickly.
Next I did this 300-piece puzzle of Mickey and Minnie dancing in front of a nighttime skyline. I loved the background on this one.
Next up was this 500-piece image of them dining with Goofy as their waiter and Donald Duck as the chef. This one was still pretty easy to do.
This 500-piece of Mickey as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice was super tricky and took forever to complete. This was partly due to the large amount of dark pieces, but was actually made worse by the fact that the pieces were soft and even a little mushy and didn’t fit together well. I had to try and retry pieces to get them to fit, and even though it is technically complete, I am still not sure I got all the pieces in the right spots.
I finished up with this 750-piece puzzle of Mickey, Goofy, and Donald Duck on a bicycle. It was the most fun to do of all of them. It has a combination of very busy areas and sold color sections. These solid color sections were a lot easier than the sorcerer puzzle, though, because the pieces were in better shape and I could easily tell when a piece was in the right spot.
All in all, I enjoyed doing this set of puzzles. Plus, it was a great puzzle box value – five puzzles out for only one puzzle in!
I love the idea of paper quilling and other paper crafts, and I actually was into making stamped cards for several years. So when I saw Paper Paradise at the bookstore, I had to get it.
This 500-piece Galison puzzle has a beautiful design with bold colors and intricate detail. I thoroughly enjoyed putting it together. The quality of the puzzle was excellent as well. The pieces had a nice feel and fit together well, and the image was clear and crisp. The artist is Yulia Brodskaya.
I highly recommend this puzzle! I would love to do more like it!
Painted Lady is a charming 500-piece puzzle from Bits and Pieces that I picked up at a puzzle box in my area. At first glance I thought it was a Charles Wysocki, but it is actually Joseph Holodook. This is my first puzzle from him.
I really enjoyed this puzzle. After a quick sort, I did the edges and then started on the various sections of the puzzle. My favorite part was the painters’ buggy – I like the dark colors and words on the side of it.
This came together quickly and was a lot of fun. I’ve been doing a lot of these smaller puzzles lately, though, and I think I’m going to tackle a 1000-piece for my next one.
Feathers is a 500-piece foil puzzle from Galison that my son gave me for Christmas/birthday last year. The artist is Margaret Berg. Although it had been on my wish list, I was a little nervous going into this one because of how many different colors and textures there were on all the feathers. It turned out to be super easy to complete. I enjoyed it from start to finish, especially with the gold foil accents!
There were so many interesting patterns and colors in this design. And there were no (or very few) pieces without something on them, which made the puzzle go together very quickly. Another win for this brand!
Winter Perch is a charming 500-piece puzzle from Galison, and the artist is Cagla Zimmerman. It features a winter scene of several birdhouses with birds flying around them that provide pops of color against the more muted background of blue-green foliage.
This was an enjoyable puzzle to do. I chose it as part of the Winter Bingo challenge I have been doing with the Casual Puzzlers Facebook group. This puzzle was for the Winter Scene bingo square, which was actually the final square on the board for me.
Here is the finished puzzle as well as the finished bingo card:
With the completed bingo card, I actually earned six entries into the bingo giveaway drawing:
I had a lot of fun doing the bingo and picking puzzles that would fit the different squares. I will say that it feels a little strange now to just choose any puzzle I want to do without thinking about the bingo challenge. I got used to having that structure! I do have several puzzles on my to-do list, though, so I am looking forward to doing whatever I want now.
Peanuts Baseball is a fun 500-piece puzzle from Aquarius that I purchased to use for the Winter Bingo I am participating in this season. It depicts several different scenes showing the characters from the Peanuts cartoon playing baseball.
This is the first puzzle I have done from this brand, and I was very happy with it. The pieces were a nice thickness and fit together quite well. There were no false fits, and I was able to move sections around pretty easily. The only downside was that it was missing one piece at the end.
Such a fun, colorful puzzle! I would be open to doing more from this brand.
Songbirds is a super cute puzzle from Mudpuppy. It is 500 pieces, and the artist is Neiko Ng. I had originally received it from a Secret Santa exchange during Christmas 2022, but I donated the puzzle before doing it to a drive they were having at our church specifically asking for new games and puzzles. I did really like it, though, so I ended up purchasing it for myself recently.
It was a very easy puzzle to do. The birds all came together quite quickly. There were a large number of light blue pieces with musical notation on them that were harder to put in. Once I sorted by shape, however, they went in pretty quickly as well.
I was very happy with the quality of this puzzle. There was virtually no puzzle dust, and the pieces fit together very well. I was able to move sections around fairly easily, and there were no false fits.
I am so glad I got this puzzle again. There is one other Mudpuppy puzzle that I donated which I have put back on my wish list, called Hungry Plants.
Ice Cream Truck is the third food truck puzzle I have done from Ceaco. These 500-pieces puzzles are fun, colorful puzzles that I have really enjoyed doing. The artist is Stephanie Peterson Jones.
I do have to admit that this one was my least favorite of the three in terms of quality. There were a lot of pieces that were stuck together and had to be torn apart. They also didn’t lay flat as nicely as the other Ceaco puzzles I have done. And there was a lot of puzzle dust!
The image, however, was great. I loved all the signage and the bright, colorful details in the puzzle. Even with more sky than the other ones had, it was still pretty easy to put together.
As much as I have enjoyed these, I am not planning to get any more of them unless I run across them in the puzzle box or at a thrift store. I’m ready to tackle some other subject matter!
I recently found a Facebook group for a puzzle box in my area. It is located on the side of the person’s home, and people can drop off puzzles they don’t want anymore and take puzzles that other people have dropped off. I visited it for the first time last weekend and brought home three puzzles to do.
The next day I chose the one I was the most excited about and put it together. It was a 500-piece puzzle from Ravensburger called Needlework Station. It was a large format puzzle, so the pieces were bigger than on a normal puzzle, which I kind of liked. The artist is Lars Stewart.
This puzzle was a real joy to do. The sorting was easy and the pieces were great quality. They fit together well and it was easy to move sections around. The colors and textures in the image were colorful and interesting.
Now I have to decide whether to take it back and exchange it for another puzzle or keep it around for a while to do again later!
In So Many Words 