Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Reading Nook is a 750-piece puzzle from RoseArt, and the artist is Cynthia Frenette. I have done a few RoseArt puzzles now and am liking the brand a lot; I’m not sure why I haven’t tried them before now. I love how cozy and inviting this scene looks, and I can definitely imagine curling up with my cat and a good book in this space.
Rainbow Stationery is a 750-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Martha Roberts. This is part of their ColorStory line. It was a very satisfying rainbow puzzle. The fit was pretty loose, but I really enjoyed the process of working through each color. There is something pleasing about seeing the items all lined up like that!
Corner Bakery is a 750-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and the artist is Elissa Della-Piana. It is one of their large piece puzzles, so it completely filled up my puzzle board, which is designed to hold up to 1500-piece puzzles!
I love this image. The bakery seems so quaint and cozy. I especially love the red shelf and the chalkboard menu. It looks like a place that would be fun to visit, and not only for the delicious treats.
Wine Country Camper is a 750-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Stephanie Peterson Jones. This charming puzzle is part of the Happy Camper series, and I was really happy to get a hold of it. The series is mostly 300-piece puzzles, with just a few larger ones, and I was glad to finally track down a copy of this one at Poshmark (not a place I expected to find puzzles!)
This was such a fun puzzle to do! I love all the colorful elements and different textures. I will definitely be doing this one again and again!
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!
I love rainbow puzzles, and this was a fun one. It’s so satisfying to work a puzzle section by section. I got this one at the puzzle swap and assumed I would do it once and pass it along, but I think I might keep it to do again.
The puzzle is from the ColorStory line, but I couldn’t find a specific title. The brand is Ceaco, and the artist is Lars Stewart. It is 750 pieces.
Ceaco has a series of puzzles called Happy Camper, and I picked up this 5-in-1 multipack featuring some of those images. I started doing Happy Camper puzzles after I finished all of the Food Trucks that are currently out. Most of them are only 300 pieces, which makes for a short puzzling experience, but they are really cute, so I like them. I thought this pack would be a good way to get a bunch of them for a lower price.
I was not impressed with this pack of puzzles at all. Some of the images are cut off versions of the original puzzles, and the quality was terrible. The image was coming off the cardboard in a lot of places. A lot of the pieces were damaged and a couple had even lost the knobs entirely. The puzzles are cute, but I would recommend getting the individual ones instead of the multipack. Those are usually a bit better quality.
One thing I did enjoy was that for the last two puzzles I did (the vertical 300-pieces ones), I solved them without looking at the image while I was puzzling. It gave me a different experience to what I normally do, and I enjoyed it. It was fun figuring out where sections went as the puzzle came together. I don’t know if I would like to do this all the time; I think it could be quite frustrating on a larger, more detailed puzzle.
Here are the completed puzzles from the set:
Cozy Front Porch is a 750-piece puzzle from Ravensburger. I got it from the puzzle box in Elizabethtown. It’s not my favorite type of puzzle to do, but I knew the quality would be good and that it would probably be a good puzzling experience. I do like the color palette of this image a lot, and I would call the experience satisfying.
The current puzzle challenge on the Casual Puzzlers Facebook group involves a weekly clue/puzzle theme, and the second one was Books. For that theme, I chose to redo a puzzle that I originally did back in 2021 – Frederick the Literate from Buffalo Games. This is a Charles Wysocki puzzle, and it is 750 pieces.
This was a lot of fun. I really enjoy putting together words in puzzles, and this one had a lot of those. All of the book titles are made up and cat-related – very cute! Of course, I found the cat fur to be the hardest part.
Cat Balloon Race is a 750-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Jeff Haynie. I am participating in a Spring Hopscotch challenge in the Casual Puzzler’s Facebook group and needed a puzzle for the Air Travel space. As I was scrolling Amazon under that topic, this one really caught my eye.
This was a very enjoyable puzzling experience. The image was too busy to easily sort pieces, so I just pulled out the edges and flipped the rest of the pieces over and put them in sorting trays. I missed a few pieces on the initial edge sort, but they turned up eventually and didn’t cause any problems.
Towards the end I did do a bit more sorting as there were a number of pastel pieces which were a bit harder to place. Overall, this puzzle provided a nice level of difficulty. The only real drawback was a ton of puzzle dust – more than I think I have seen before!
So many fun details in this puzzle! And I loved the image even though I would never go up in a hot air balloon myself. I’m too afraid of heights!
In So Many Words 