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!
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!
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:
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.
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!
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.
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
