Seed of Life and Square Petals

I did two more puzzles from Josie Lewis this week. I just love her artwork! Both of these are 300 pieces and come from Buffalo Games.

The circular puzzle is called Seed of Life. It was very relaxing to put together – I found the whole thing just flowed from one piece to the next. The square puzzle is called Square Petals. It was a bit harder to do but still enjoyable.

Rainbow/gradient puzzles are some of my favorite puzzles to do. It is so fun to be able to start a puzzle in one section and just work your way around the puzzle, and seeing the colors all lined up is so pleasant!

Vivid Vinyl

Vivid Vinyl is a 500-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Josie Lewis. I just love her artwork! I have been collecting a lot of the puzzles with her artwork because they are so fun. I actually have an ebay alert set up for Josie Lewis Puzzle so I can watch for the ones I still want to get.

This puzzle turned out to be pretty easy to do. I started with the border and then pulled out all of the pieces with the middles of the vinyls. Once I had those in place, I just worked my way from the pieces with the most color on them down to the last few that were just white.

I think this is such a happy puzzle (at least that’s what it evokes for me, lol), and I am looking forward to doing more of hers.

Rainbow Sunrise

Rainbow Sunrise is a 500-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Josie Lewis. This was such a relaxing puzzle to put together, and the rainbow gradient is so beautiful.

I have actually started collecting Josie Lewis puzzles because of how much I love them. I have five so far, three of which I still have left to do. I also started following her on TikTok, where she shares her current art as well as spotlights other artists who are doing interesting work.

Buffalo Games puzzles are very good quality. The pieces have a nice smooth finish to them that is very pleasant to the touch. I wish I liked more of their images, but unfortunately a lot of them are not my preferred style.

Here are the three Lewis puzzles I have on my to do shelf right now:

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:

Hue Wormhole

Hue Wormhole is a beautiful puzzle by Wenjia Wang.  This is a 1000-piece, circular puzzle from Antelope Puzzles, and it was a lot of fun to put together. I have never done a circular puzzle this big and it actually ended up being too big for the puzzle board I was doing it on.  I had to carefully transfer it to foam board to get photos of it.

The colors in this puzzle are gorgeous, and the quality is impressive! The pieces were a nice thickness and fit together well. I started with the border and then worked my way from the outer green and blue up to the purple edge. The greens and orange went pretty well, but then I got a big bogged down in the reds. I kept working it and eventually got to the purples, which were a lot easier.

All in all, this was a joy to assemble and I highly recommend it!

The Gardener’s Palette

The Gardener’s Palette is a 1000-piece puzzle from Ravensburger. The artist is Anne Searle.

This one had been on my wish list for quite a while. I think the image is so pretty, but I also thought it would be doable since each type of flower has its own block within the puzzle. I stopped at Barnes & Noble before my last therapy appointment and picked it up then. Last week, I had a tooth pulled and my friend Renee brought me a dinner of soft foods and hung out to watch some Grey’s Anatomy. I had already seen the episodes and was getting restless, so I decided to start this puzzle. After sorting the pieces, I was glad I had my little vacuum because of course there is so much puzzle dust with Ravensburger.

I worked on the puzzle little by little over the next several days and it was such a joy to do. I love the quality of Ravensburger puzzles. It was so much nicer than some of the puzzles I have done recently (either because of poor quality or having been done so many times that they were soft and breaking apart). The image is just beautiful and it even has words to put together to identify each flower. (I love puzzling words!)

So pretty!

Completing the Puzzle – October 2024

This was my second box of four puzzles from my Completing the Puzzle subscription. I enjoyed three out of the four, but that fourth one had me questioning whether I want to continue with the subscription! I have decided to give it another month and see how it goes.

The first puzzle I did was Sugar Spectrum from the brand Fred. It was 500 pieces, and the artist was Emily Blincoe. It is a classic rainbow style puzzle and was a lot of fun, as well as being pretty easy. I have done several puzzles of this style, and this one was a good representation of it.

My second puzzle was Le Cinque Terre, which was also from Fred and 500 pieces. This is the one that made me question everything. I really liked the image from Maurizio Santucci and Elisa Certi. I enjoy buildings and this one had adorable ones. At first glance, the sky and sea didn’t seem too bad, but they were actually horrible. I had to take the sky apart several times before finally getting it together – there were so many false fits that I almost gave up. When I finally finished the sky, I found there was one piece missing. Ugh!

I did give up on the sea. The parts with a design on them weren’t bad, but the plain blue pieces seemed to go together correctly until I realized I had two open spots but the two pieces I had left were different shapes than the openings I had. I did find one piece out of place and fixed that, but I couldn’t find the culprits that caused the mismatch at the end. I finally gave up and just left the pieces out.

I had another Fred puzzle in my box but decided to switch it up and do the MasterPieces 300-piece puzzle from Dean Russo called Mad Kitty. This one had large EZ Grip pieces that would be great for someone with arthritis or some other hand issue. It was random cut as well, which was fun. I love cats, so this image was great. I also enjoyed how colorful and chaotic the pattern was. Super fun!

The last puzzle I completed from this month’s box was Beach Trash, also from Fred. It was 500 pieces and the artist was Emily Blincoe, just like the Sugar Spectrum puzzle I did earlier. It was one I had seen online before but never quite liked enough to buy it outright, so I was glad to get the chance to do it this way. It was a good puzzle; the difficulty was medium low so I never got stuck or frustrated.

I find it interesting how I can have such a negative feeling towards the subscription when three of the four puzzles had absolutely no problems at all. That one bad experience almost overwhelms the positive feelings from the other three. But, like I said above, I am not going to cancel just yet. I am going to give it another month and see how it goes.

Colorful Fruits Rows

Colorful Fruits Rows is one of the Yummy Puzzles from Cra-Z-Art. It is 500 pieces. I think the title is a bid odd, but that’s all I could find.

I got this one for free at my local puzzle box. I did the green section first because it had the fewest pieces, but after that I ended up sorting by shape and doing it one row at a time. It wasn’t bad since it’s only a 500-piece puzzle, and it was satisfying to see it completed.

Flowers (Repeat)

I wanted to do another rainbow puzzle to enter in the monthly contest on Reddit and chose this one from my stash. Flowers is a 500-piece Galison puzzle that I first did in 2021; it was actually my second puzzle. The artist is Julie Seabrook Ream.

This reminded me how much I enjoy Galison puzzles. The pieces were a nice size and good quality, and the image is so pretty!

Welcoming All

Welcoming All is a Color Sauce puzzle from MasterPieces, and it is 500 pieces. I ordered this specifically so I could do something Pride related during the month of June.

This was a very fun puzzle to do. I love things that are in rainbow order because it is easy to separate the pieces by color and also very satisfying to see each section come together. I love the image with the wood grain look of the different color panels along with the solid black heart at the center.

I was a bit nervous to post this on Facebook because I have a lot of conservative friends. I did get one like that I was surprised by, and I only got one negative comment and he only said “Nah?”, so not too bad overall.

I also reactivated my Reddit account and started posting in the r/jigsawpuzzles subreddit. This was the first puzzle I posted there. I may go back and post older puzzles interspersed with the current ones, although that does offend my sense of order, so I’m not sure how I will do it.