Tag: jigsaw puzzles

Posted on

Two Repeats for a Puzzle Challenge

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!

Posted on

Sunset Mountains – My First Wooden Puzzle

Sunset Mountains is a gorgeous 250-piece puzzle from Wentworth Wooden Puzzles. This is my first wooden puzzle, but I have heard only good things about this brand, which is made in Britain. They also are quite a bit pricier than cardboard puzzles, which is one of the reasons I haven’t tried them out before now.

The opportunity to do this puzzle came about because I am a Patreon supporter of a puzzler I follow on YouTube. She decide to offer this as a traveling puzzle to her patrons, so I signed up for it. The puzzle was sent to me by the first person who got it, and I will be sending it to the next person on the list in a few days.

This puzzle was a joy from beginning to end. The pieces are laser-cut into intricate shapes with a few pieces being shaped like identifiable objects – those are called whimsy pieces.

Pile of pieces
First two pieces put together
Whimsy pieces

I decided not to start with the border because it was quite dark and I wanted to get more comfortable with how the pieces fit together. So I pulled out the brightest colors first and worked out from there. Once I got about 2/3 finished, I did the rest of the border and then filled in the darkest pieces.

Session 1
Session 2
Session 3

After I finished the puzzle, I took the whimsy pieces out so that my friend Renee could see them when she came over to my place the other day.

I would love to do more wooden puzzles, but I’m not sure they are in my budget. Either way, I’m really glad that I got to do this one!

Posted on

Village Toy Shop

Village Toy Shop is a 500-piece puzzle from Sure-Lox, and it is part of their Touch of Frost series. I got this one for free from the friend who recently moved away, and I was very happy to find that it had all of the pieces.

Don’t let the picture fool you, it was quite a bit darker than it looks and very difficult. I knew it was going to be a hard one when the sky and snow were the easy parts, lol! The building pieces were extremely dark and it was slow-going putting them in, but I did eventually get it finished.

Posted on

Tall Sea Tale

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.

Posted on

Garden Goodness

Garden Goodness is a 1000-piece puzzle from Springbok. This puzzle had its pros and cons. The pieces were a nice thickness, but there were quite a few that weren’t completely cut apart and there was a ton of puzzle dust. There weren’t false fits, but sometimes I had to force the pieces together even when they were in the right spot.

I did enjoy this image. I like grid puzzles a lot; it is satisfying to complete each block of the puzzle. I also like putting together words, and there were a lot of different typestyles represented here. So while I wouldn’t say this is a really good brand, I did have a good time doing it.

Posted on

Some Flower Puzzles

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.

Posted on

Love in the Wild

Love in the Wild is a 500-piece puzzle from Mudpuppy, and the artist is Katy Tanis. I did this with my friend Suzanne recently. We both really loved how cute it was and were happy to be able to finish it in one sitting! I tried to pick a favorite square, but they are all so adorable that I really can’t.

I really appreciate having a friend who enjoys doing puzzles. We are hoping to get together again soon with one other friend so that we can all puzzle together. I would love to find local puzzle events or even more puzzle swaps. I have thought about starting something but I’m not sure I would know how to go about it.

Posted on

Walden’s Manor House

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.

Posted on

Japan Map Puzzle

Japan Map Puzzle is a 500-piece puzzle from Hardie Grant Travel. A new puzzle challenge started a few days ago in a Facebook group I belong to, and it has a new prompt each week. The first prompt was castle. On a quick glance through my stash, I couldn’t find a puzzle that had a castle, so I made a trip to Community Aid to see what was available.

I was so happy to find this adorable puzzle with a map of Japan that featured Osaka Castle. I had never heard of this company, but I was impressed with the quality of the puzzle. The pieces were on the thinner size, but they fit together well and there were very few completely solid pink pieces.

I enjoyed putting together the map portion, and I also loved all the little images of Japanese things. The “beckoning cat” is so cute, and the Harajuku crepes look yummy!

Posted on

Seaside Village

Seaside Village is a 500 piece puzzle from White Mountain, and the artist is Lois B. Sutton.

This was a charming puzzle with a lot of fun details. The pieces are pretty large and decent quality. There were two connected edge pieces that hadn’t been cut through all the way but no problems other than that. I enjoyed this one very much.