Tag: WerkShoppe

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Festive Fun Car

It’s that time of year when I start doing my holiday puzzles! I collect them throughout the year and save them up to do in December, and this is my first one for the season.

Festive Fun Car is a 500-piece puzzle from WerkShoppe, and the artist is Helen Black. I have only done two or three puzzles from WerkShoppe, but they are definitely one of my favorite brands. The packaging is gorgeous, with a slide out box with a ribbon pull tab, a resealable plastic bag for the pieces, and a nice reference poster. The pieces are medium thick with a smooth finish that feels so good, and they fit together beautifully.

I also love, love the image on this one. It truly is festive and fun, and I really enjoyed all of the great details. The shaped balloons and hearts made of candy canes are my favorite parts, if I have to choose.

This was a great start to my holiday! And I do mean start because, even though we did bring the Christmas decorations out of storage, we haven’t put them up yet.

Have you decorated for Christmas yet?

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A Few Mini Puzzles

When I made my recent trip to Illinois, I knew I would miss being able to puzzle whenever I wanted, but I didn’t have room to take many puzzles with me. So, in addition to the one new puzzle I took with me – the PieceRelax one I posted earlier – I took these three mini puzzles.

  • Cozy Kitchen from Trevell, 99 pieces, artist Marion Reau
  • Llama Bama Ding Dong from MicroPuzzles, 150 pieces
  • Mushroom Patch from WerkShoppe, 100 pieces, artist Emma Jayne

Here are the puzzle details from left to right:

I have done all of these before, but they were the perfect size to pack and I knew they would at least let me scratch the puzzling itch while I was away from home.

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Pumpkin Spice Cafe

Pumpkin Spice Cafe is a 1000 piece puzzle from WerkShoppe, and the artist is Maria Taylor. I know it’s not quite fall yet but I just couldn’t wait to do this one. I just love the scene it presents, with the wind blowing the leaves all around and the cozy scenes in the windows of the buildings.

Solving this puzzle was so enjoyable. It didn’t have too much of any one color, and the piece shapes were really interesting.

The packaging was also beautiful. The pieces were in a plastic bag inside a resealable bag and the box slid open from the side via a small fabric pull tag. The only downside was that a lot of the pieces were still together, and when I tried to pull them apart, I found that they hadn’t been cut all the way through so the paper would tear. I had to apply a lot of pressure to compress the pieces as I pulled to prevent that.

I think I would do more from this brand despite the issue with the pieces being stuck together if I really loved the image.

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A Mini and a Micro

I recently treated myself to an early Christmas present and ordered several puzzles from Puzzledly. This included a mini puzzle and a micro puzzle, which I did right away.

Mushroom Patch is a 100-piece mini puzzle from WerkShoppe, and the artist is Emma Jayne. It came in an adorable zip-lock bag. The pieces were a nice size and the puzzle came together quickly. I did it without looking at the image to make it more fun. I think it would be a good candidate for puzzle chess.

Llama Bama Ding Dong is a 150-piece micro puzzle from MicroPuzzles. I have always wanted to try this brand, and I thought this image was so cute! The pieces were even tinier than I thought they would be, but I could still manipulate them with my hands and didn’t need tweezers or anything. The quality wasn’t great, as the pieces would seem to fit almost anywhere and I had to really pay attention to whether they fit exactly right.

Here is a picture of them side by side so you can see how much smaller the micro puzzle is than the mini puzzle. Quite a difference!