Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Dog Walkers is a 500-piece puzzle from Dowdle. I received this as a gift from a friend and did it now after using the randomizer on my puzzle app to pick my next puzzle.
Honestly, I am not a huge fan of this brand. Something about the artwork just does not appeal to me. I also encountered a lot of false fits with this puzzle, especially in the top section. The top third of the puzzle took quite a while to complete.
The Artist’s Desk is a 1000-piece puzzle from Ravensburger. I picked it up at a thrift shop and was pleasantly surprised upon opening the box to find a small ziploc bag with the edge pieces separated out. It was nice to be able to jump right into puzzling!
This was a fun image to put together. I did have to shape sort for the darker areas, but it still wasn’t too hard. And, of course, the Ravensburger quality is always excellent!
The first puzzle I did from my four-puzzle subscription this month was Envelopes by Tania Wicks. I have wanted to try one of her puzzles for quite a while, but they are pricey and not readily available here in the state, so I was excited to get this one to do.
I absolutely loved it! The image is stunning; I love the subject matter and the colors are so rich and peaceful. The puzzle quality was really good as well, and it was a joy to solve.
My second puzzle was Copenhagen from eeBoo. I always enjoy their puzzles. I like the size and shape of their pieces, and I don’t mind that they are glossy – I have never had a problem with that.
This image is so charming with all the different buildings. I like how some of them are slanted and how they have different textures. So fun!
My third puzzle was Asian Oil Paper Umbrellas from Eurographics. It is a stunning image with lots of bold colors and lovely details. I really enjoyed doing this one. It was challenging without being frustrating, and I’m glad I got the chance to do it.
The quality was okay, but it has definitely been done many times; one of the pieces was smashed and one was missing a corner. Despite that, I had a lot of fun solving this one.
My fourth and final puzzle for this shipment was The Greatest Bookstore in the World, also from Eurographics. I love books and bookstores so was immediately drawn to this image. It started out pretty easy with a few of the larger objects and color blocks but then got tricky with all the tiny little books.
The pieces were all two in, two out, so I couldn’t shape sort. Thankfully they were all unique and I didn’t have any false fits. It was secondhand and there was one piece missing. Overall still a nice challenge.
Closing Thoughts
All four puzzles this month were 1000 pieces. I like that because it feels like I am getting my money’s worth out of the subscription. I am definitely doing one more month of the subscription, possibly two.
Bright Heart is a 500-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games. The artwork is from EttaVee, which is the brand created by Jessi Raulet, an American artist living in France.
If you are looking for a challenge, this is it! I chose this puzzle because of its striking artwork; it has such beautiful colors and patterns!
I started this one with my friend Suzanne, who did the border and a bit of the interior, and then I finished it up by myself. There was a lot of looking at the poster and I decided to sort by shape when I was only halfway through the puzzle.
I’m not complaining, though. Even though it was hard, the image is amazing and the puzzle quality is really good. I highly recommend!
Another note about the artist: when I visited ettavee.com on my phone, a popup gave me the opportunity to access downloadable wallpapers and I now have a bit of her artwork on my phone screen!
Here are some pictures of the progress along the way, along with the finished puzzle.
Happy National Puzzle Day to all my fellow puzzlers!
From the National Day Calendar website, here is the origin story of this day:
In 2002, Jodi Jill created National Puzzle Day as a way to share her enjoyment of puzzles. As a syndicated newspaper puzzle maker and professional quiz maker, Jodi Jill developed classroom lesson plans especially for the observance and the popularity has grown year after year.
I started puzzling in June 2021, after my therapist suggested I find a hobby in addition to my interest in reading. Here is the puzzle that started it all:
This was titled Rare and Beautiful, a 500-piece puzzle from Puzzle Crush. Since then, I have completed 172 unique puzzles and done a few a second time as well. I have connected with fellow puzzlers on Facebook, Instagram, and even Reddit.
National Puzzle Day is for any type of puzzle, not just jigsaw puzzles, so you could do a crossword, word search, Sudoku, or a brain teaser, to list a few examples. I am having a friend over tonight, and we will be doing a jigsaw puzzle together.
Do you enjoy any kind of puzzles?
It took me more than a month to finish the four puzzles I got as my Completing the Puzzle subscription for December. I finally finished the fourth one last night.
Rooster from Cloudberries, 1000 pieces
Common Quilt Block Patterns from Cobble Hill, 1000 pieces
New York City Life from eeBoo, 1000 pieces
50 States Quilt Blocks from Cobble Hill, 1000 pieces
I enjoyed all four of them, even though the two quilt block puzzles were very similar. The New York puzzle had one piece missing on the upper left corner, but the 50 States puzzle came with an extra piece form some other puzzle, so I guess it all evened out! I will send the extra piece back in a separate bag with a note so the staff can look for where it goes.
I have 12 more puzzles on my wish list at Completing the Puzzle, so I’m planning to keep my subscription for another 3 months at least. I’m not guaranteed to get puzzles from my wish list, but so far all the ones I have gotten were from there.
Puzzle Complaints is a 500-piece puzzle from Workman Puzzles, and the artist is popular children’s book author Sandra Boynton. I had done this puzzle very close to when I started puzzling in 2021 and decided to redo it to bring in the New Year.
It is such a fun puzzle! I love all the different sayings and the complaining chickens. The text around the border of the puzzle is pretty amusing as well.
Winter Lights is a 500-piece puzzle from Galison, and the artist is Joy LaForme. This was a gift from my friend Kim. She is really good at picking out puzzles I like, and this one is no exception!
It is kind of hard to see from a photo, but the puzzle has gold foil accents on it, which are so festive. I enjoyed putting together all of the buildings and vehicles most of all. The image is a bit dark, but it wasn’t too bad to work with.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!
Last Friday, there was a knock at my door and my son answered it to find my friend Jessyca, who I have not seen in several months. I was overjoyed to see her and we had a nice chat to catch up on each other’s lives. She also brought me a Christmas gift, which was a custom puzzle that she had made for me. There was no picture of what the image would be, so it was a surprise as I put it together.
This puzzle is from a company called puzzleYOU and is one of their Smart Sorted puzzles. When you open the box, you see 40 individual little boxes, each with 25 pieces in them. This allows you to choose what level of difficulty you want for your puzzling experience. You can do one box at a time or mix as many as you want together. The box did not show the puzzle, but did have a hint for what the image would be.
I chose to do one box at a time since I didn’t know what the image was. It was so fun to do each little section and then put them together. I had a few times where it seemed like I was missing a piece, but eventually I thought to check the little boxes and found that some of them had a piece at the bottom that hadn’t come out when I emptied the box the first time. So in the end, I was not missing any pieces.
Here are some pictures of my progress at various points:
This was such a fun puzzle to do, and the quality was excellent. The pieces were a nice size and thick enough to pick up easily, and it was fairly easy to move sections around. I especially enjoyed it because it had been made especially for me by a dear friend and was a reminder of the great time we had going to the Brick Fest Live event earlier this year.
I would highly recommend this company if you are interested in making a custom puzzle, and the Smart Sorted option is great for someone who might not have a lot of puzzling experience (but I also loved it even though I have done a lot of puzzles)!
Love for Holiday Baking is a 1000-piece heart-shaped, Christmas-themed puzzle from Callie Danielle. I got it at Target several months ago and have been holding onto it until now when it would fit the season.
My friend Suzanne came over one evening last week and this is the puzzle she chose to help with. She worked on the border, which is her favorite part, and I worked on some of the larger items pictured in the puzzle. Once I was on my own, I spent several evenings working on this puzzle.
Pros:
Cons:
I went on a journey with this one. Starting out, I felt hopeful that it would be pretty easy, but that quickly shifted into feeling overwhelmed. Once I got all of the larger items in the image put together, I sorted by shape and started working piece by piece. After a while, I started to make some progress on the big open spaces and felt better about the experience. As always, once it was finished, I felt a sense of accomplishment and appreciated how adorable this puzzle was.
I will admit that having done a few harder puzzles recently prompted me to go through my wish list and remove some that I thought might be on the harder side.
In So Many Words 