Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Mr. Swallowbark is a 300-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Charles Wysocki. Between the thrift store one weekend and a puzzle swap the next, I ended up with two copies of this puzzle – oops!
This was so much fun to put together. I love the red barn, and I am especially fond of the row of brooms hanging on display.
Balloons is a 300-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and it is part of their Puzzle Moments line. Normally I would be wary of an image that had so many light areas, but it is not really a problem with such a small piece count.
I do like this image, but I didn’t think the quality was quite as good as the other Ravensburgers I have done.
Simple Joys is a 1000-piece puzzle from 1canoe2, and it was simply lovely. I have done one other puzzle from them back at Christmas time and was so impressed by the quality of both the puzzle and the image. There is something about this image that just speaks to me. I love the way it highlights each of these simple things, allowing us to see how beautiful ordinary things can be.
I have said this before, but I also love the feeling puzzling gives me. The act of doing a puzzle quiets the noise in my brain for a while, much the same way that reading a book does. I hope I will be able to enjoy this hobby for many years to come.
Over the last few years, my puzzle collection has grown to exceed my book collection by quite a bit. To be fair, I only own a fraction of the books I have owned throughout my life as I have downsized books several times and mostly read library or digital books these days.
So I recently had Michael help me build a new bookshelf to house more of my puzzles. It was a pretty inexpensive one from Amazon, so it’s not very sturdy, but at least it’s standing. If I ever have to move, I’m not sure it will survive the trip!
Last Saturday, I did a bit of thrifting and was really happy with the results. The last time I was at Community Aid, the puzzle selection was sparse, but this time, they had a whole bin of pretty nice puzzles and I grabbed five of them. Then I went to Blue Mountain Thrift Store, which is where my son Michael works, and I was happy to see that they had puzzles as well. A lot of them were the really old ones you tend to see at thrift stores, but they did have some newer ones and I picked out three of them to purchase.
Yesterday, I attended a pop up puzzle swap which was in the parking lot of a shopping center in my town. It was put together fairly quickly, so unfortunately only three people showed up, but the organizer is hoping to do more of them and I had an enjoyable time talking with the two other ladies who were there.
I took twenty puzzles to swap, three of which were sets with multiple puzzles in the box. One of the women took one puzzle, and the other one took one regular puzzle and one set that had four puzzles. The woman who took the set had lots of puzzles to choose from. She mostly does 1000 piece puzzles, her sister does 500 pieces, and her mom does 300 pieces, and she had a TON of 300 piece puzzles. I don’t normally do a lot of 300 pieces, but they are nice when you just want something quick and easy.
I ended up getting six new-to-me puzzles, including several from Charles Wysocki, who I am very drawn to. When I sat down at home to add them to my puzzle spreadsheet, I realized that one of them was a duplicate of one I got thrifting last weekend – oops! I’m not too upset about it; I will just pass it on to someone else.
I think I am going to start posting the puzzles I want to get rid of on Facebook Marketplace. The woman who organized the puzzle swap yesterday shared with me that when she posts puzzles there, she mentions in the description that she is willing to swap, and some people have taken her up on that instead of just buying the puzzles. I think that would help me fill my thirst for new puzzles without breaking the bank!
Holiday Postcards is a 1000-piece puzzle from Trefl. I purchased this one for a challenge that is taking place in a Facebook group I belong to which has a weekly clue. This week’s clue was postcard, and this puzzle fit that perfectly.
This was my first time doing this brand, and I was very pleased with it. The fit was a bit loose, so it took a minute for me to get used to and make sure I was getting the right piece in the right place, but once I got used to it, things were fine.
The image is a really good one for a puzzle. There were a lot of different colors and textures, and I finished it faster than I thought I would. I would definitely be open to getting more from this brand.
Bonus puzzle: Last week’s clue was ladder, and someone in the group mentioned a puzzle that had a barely noticeable ladder. I had actually done that puzzle before and still had it, so I redid it for the challenge. It is called Northern Lights, and it is a 500-piece Nancy Wernersbach from Ravensburger.
Can you find the ladder?
Boho Interior is a 500-piece puzzle from PieceRelax, and the artist is Olivia Gibbs. PieceRelax is a brand created by Pintoo, which is known for their plastic pieces and interchangeable edge/frame pieces. The brand aims to highlight the relaxing aspect of puzzling, and this image certainly does that!
I did this puzzle with my friend Suzanne when she was over recently. She picked it from my smaller piece count puzzles because of the cats in the image. We both enjoyed it. The pieces are pretty small and get harder to click into place the more you get done, but it’s really not too bad. And it’s so cool to be able to pick up the finished puzzle and do whatever you want to it without it coming apart!
I have done one Pintoo puzzle before, but this was my first one from PieceRelax, and I was pleasantly surprised when I opened it that it included a free puzzle magnet. It is so pretty and really added to the experience of ordering from this company.
Rockies Explorer is a 500-piece puzzle from Villager Puzzles, and the artist is Anja Jane. This was my first experience with Villager, which is a woman-owned Canadian brand featuring artwork from Canadian women artists.
The puzzle came in a box with a magnetic closure and a reusable plastic bag. It included a nice size poster as well. The pieces have a lovely matte finish and fit together beautifully, and the art was great. I loved the colors, especially the sky and mountains, and I am looking forward to doing more of their puzzles.
Last September, I completed my first 2000-piece puzzle, which was Novel Avenue from Ravensburger (artist Demelsa Haughton). I loved it so much that I wanted to save it and hang it up on my wall.
For my first attempt, I taped the back with blue painter’s tape and put it in an inexpensive frame that I got off Amazon. The frame turned out to be too flimsy for a puzzle, and I took it down after a while. Next, I got a bunch of Command Strips and used them to attach the puzzle to the wall. I had several across the top and bottom of the puzzle. That was better, but then it started bowing out in the middle, so I took it down and added another row of the strips across the center.
Unfortunately, that didn’t hold up very well. Perhaps it would have been okay if I had done three rows from the beginning, but there’s no way to know and I really wanted to protect my puzzle as well as show it off better. I started looking into framing, and that’s when I found Preserve My Puzzle.
Preserve My Puzzle were so great to work with. They offer either lamination or framing, and I chose framing. Since my puzzle was larger than the sizes priced on their site, I submitted a request for a custom quote. They got back to me very quickly with a quote and even called to follow up and see if I had any questions. It was very simple to turn my quote into an order and get the ball rolling.
Within a couple of days, a puzzle mailing kit arrived at my door. Since my puzzle was so big, they recommended using a standard mailing kit and breaking the puzzle into two halves. That would keep the shipping down, although the shipping on the return trip would be higher due to the size of the framed full puzzle.
The kit included a mailer with a UPS label already affixed, a tri-fold cardboard holder for the puzzle, and puzzle glue sheets to put on the back of the puzzle. I removed the blue painter’s tape I had previously used, split the puzzle into two sections, and put on the glue sheets. Then I packaged the puzzle up in the tri-fold and put it in the mailer so I could take it to the UPS store.
There was only one tiny glitch when I got an automated email a few days later asking if I had sent my puzzle yet. The tracking showed it had already been delivered, so I was concerned and emailed them to check on it. It turned out they did have my puzzle, but because it was a custom order, it didn’t get checked in the same way as a regular order so the automated email system didn’t know they had it. Phew!
The mounted and framed puzzle arrived at my door a couple of days later. It was the most securely packaged item I have ever gotten. There were cardboard corners, shrink wrap over the frame, foam pieces nestled over the edges on all four sides, and bubble wrap covering the entire thing.
The frame had a wire attached to the back so that it could be easily hung on the wall. I had a friend help me measure and hang it up on the wall above my couch in the living room. I am incredibly pleased with the result!
Eames House of Cards Fantasy is a 1500-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and it was designed by collage artist Shelley Davies to commemorate Eames’ 80th anniversary.
Best known for their groundbreaking furniture designs, Charles and Ray Eames also developed a number of iconic toys. The first edition of their House of Cards was introduced in the US in the 1950s, and it has continued through several iterations since then. This building toy is a deck of picture cards, each with six slits allowing them to be built in many different shapes and sizes.
This puzzle was a lot of fun to put together. There were so many interesting patterns and intriguing little details. The Ravensburger quality is so good, of course, and because it was secondhand, I didn’t even have to deal with the puzzle dust they are so infamous for.
This was also my first 1500-piece puzzle. I have done one 2000-piece, but usually I do 1000-pieces or less. I would be open to doing more large count puzzles if the image is good and doesn’t have a lot of solid color areas.
Joyful Aviary is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Olivia Gibbs. This image is a bit different than what I have seen before from her, but I liked all the colorful birds and had been wanting some lower piece counts to mix in with my other puzzles.
I actually ended up doing this for the puzzle challenge I am currently participating in. The challenge has a new clue every week for 10 weeks. For the first four weeks, there was just one clue, but on week 5, the mystery split into two paths with different clues for each path. Once you picked a path, you had to follow that path and its clues through the rest of the challenge.
For week 5, I had a choice of snow/mountains or desert/marketplace. I chose snow and that’s why I did the Charles Wysocki puzzle Hickory Haven Canal. For week 6, the clue for my team was tropical bird, and the other team had bridge. This puzzle fit the tropical bird theme and then some!
In So Many Words 