Tag: jigsaw puzzles

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Solena

I ran across this puzzle at a local thrift store recently and was intrigued enough to bring it home. It was packaged in a cylinder, which is unusual for puzzles, and the brand was called Remember, which I had never heard of. After a bit of Googling, I found out that it is a German brand featuring design and gift items. They currently have 8 puzzles on their website, all of which have abstract designs like this one.

The puzzle was fun to put together, but the pieces do have a fairly loose fit. Because of this, I had some false fits in the beginning. Once I knew to look carefully at whether a piece actually fit where I was trying it, I got better at recognizing when it was in the right place. The pieces were rigid and had a black backing, both very different from the puzzles I am used to.

Here is a picture of the packaging the puzzle came in:

I would enjoy doing more Remember puzzles, although I don’t know if I will ever get the chance. You can get them through Amazon, but they are prohibitively expensive. I didn’t realize the deal I was getting for $4.99 at the time I bought it!

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Diamond Dahlia

Diamond Dahlia is a 500-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Josie Lewis. I think this is a perfect example of a rainbow puzzle. It is so satisfying to do a puzzle where I can start with one color and work my way around.

The white lines in the design along with the shading of the colors made it easier to place pieces than I thought it would be, although the red and pinks were very similar and took a bit longer than the other colors.

I really want to get one other puzzle of hers, Rainbow Sunrise. It is out of stock everywhere I’ve looked, though, so I’ve got an alert set up on ebay in case one shows up there. Here’s a picture of that one:

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Hickory Haven Canal

Hickory Haven Canal is a 1000-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Charles Wysocki. This one was a Christmas present from my son. 😊

If you do puzzles for any length of time, you will most certainly come across Charles Wysocki and his Americana/folk art scenes. I am drawn to them partly because of my love of buildings, which are very common in his images, but I also just like the general feel of them.

Sometimes they have large areas of one color, like a green meadow or a field of crops, and for those I tend to prefer a smaller piece count so they won’t be super hard. Even though this image has a lot of snow, there is enough going on all over the puzzle that it was not too hard to do as a 1000-piece.

All that to say this was a very enjoyable puzzle, and I’m very happy that Michael got it for me.

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Wine Country Camper

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!

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Amsterdam Weekend

Amsterdam Weekend is a 1000-piece puzzle from Antelope Puzzle, and the artist is Lynn Weilin. I have done a couple other puzzles from this brand, and one of them was actually from this same artist. I continue to be impressed by the quality of this brand, and the image is perfect for me.

I love all the different colors of the buildings and how they each have their own style of windows and doors. The street/park scene in the front is a nice addition so it’s not *all* buildings.

I am totally open to doing more from Antelope, but they just don’t have a lot of images that appeal to me.

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Sugarplum Village

How’s this for Christmas in July? The finished puzzle looks really nice, but I actually won’t be keeping this one in my collection. It was my first puzzle from this brand, and the pieces had a weird feel to them that was unpleasant to me.

The colors were also quite muted, which made it more difficult. The tree pieces look much more gray than green, for example. I do like the image, just didn’t enjoy the puzzling experience as much as I usually do.

Sugarplum Village from Puzzle Weekend, 1000 pieces
Artist Sabina Fenn

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Spring and Summer Gnomes

Spring Gnomes and Summer Gnomes are 500-piece puzzles from Bits and Pieces. They are part of a set of 4 puzzles I got a while ago. Last year I did the fall and winter puzzles, and I was recently inspired to finish these ones off.

These two were definitely more fun than the other ones. The fall one was tricky, but the winter one was diabolically hard between the random cut pieces and the many shades of white and gray. The summer puzzle was the easiest of the four because it has more colorful elements that are spread out more throughout the design.

While these are very cute puzzles, I don’t think I would want to do them again, so the set is going in the stack for the next puzzle swap I am able to attend.

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The Tree of Hope

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!

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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!

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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!