-
Beyond the Looking Glass
Every so often, when I’m bored, I get online and start looking for the puzzles I remember my family having when I was a kid. These are the ones that I’ve been told about us having or the ones I vaguely remember. This is one of those puzzles. My brother was helping me the day that I found this one online. He kept sending me hints and possible images of what he remembered. He’s a few years older than me, so his memory is better.
As a family we were much more into puzzles when my brother and I were young, like grade school and younger. My parents often had a card table set up in the den with a puzzle out on it. It was my dad that got us into puzzling. He’s said that he got into it because there wasn’t much to do in the barracks, so he’d do a puzzle. I think by the time he retired from the military, we had a nice collection. Unfortunately, the basement of one of the houses we were renting flooded and we lost all of the puzzles. Hence, the current search based on sketchy memories. My parents help some in the image search but this was more than 20 years ago, so memories are sketchy.
This is one of the puzzles that we had. The photo of it completed is an old one I found in our photos when searching for something else. I can remember learning how to do puzzles by taking out completed section. It was never more than a 3 by 3 or 4 by 4 square. But then I worked on putting it back together. Working on the puzzle as a whole was just too intimidating, but I liked having that little section. Perhaps this is what my parents showed me to keep me busy but it’s how I entertained myself with the family puzzle.
-
Cat Balloon Race
I think I’ve commented this before, but I guess I’m a cat person now. Although, I’m not sure who wouldn’t want to do this puzzle. It’s such a unique image and fun with the cats all dressed up and riding around in hot air balloons. It looks a little more steampunk-like than true hot air balloons. I know when I found the puzzle, I went online to see if there were more like it. Unfortunately, there’s not but I’m hoping that more come.
Let’s get started!
Not looking at the image while I puzzle means that I’m just relying on my memory of the image and my guesses on where the sections go in the puzzle. With this one, I had that red and yellow balloon in the totally wrong side. I don’t know why I thought it went on the side or even the top but I was trying it out there until I got more of it together and realized that it belonged on the bottom. That’s the fun of puzzling, for me at least. I know it’s not for others. But I like that discovery of where a section belongs.
Again, this was a really fun puzzle to put together. And as I was working on it, I took notice of the other cats in the puzzle. The two on the top left stand out because they’re the most in focus but there’s also a couple down further on the left and then over to the right. I’m not quite sure what’s going on in the image but I imagine it’s a bit like an old-fashioned Sunday picnic where they’re just going for a ride and a bit of a meal while they take in the view.
Because there was so much going on, I did a short video of the puzzle.
-
Scoop Du Jour
I’m not sure of the date on this puzzle, but I’m guessing it’s from the late 1990s, early 2000s. I don’t quite see that as vintage, but people on eBay do seeing as that’s how I was able to find it. After my grandma died last year, I wished that I’d been able to get this puzzle from her house. I did try, but it was tossed before I had a chance to ask for it. She loved cats. I was probably in middle school when I did this puzzle for her. I don’t remember finding it or the moment when I decided that gluing the completed puzzle and framing it was something that she would like. But she did.
Months ago, I started searching for this puzzle and finally found it on eBay. I debated getting it a lot because it’s not the same one that she had and it’s just a bit of nostalgia. But the more I waited and thought, the more I realized that even though it’s not the same one, it’s still the image that I did for her. It’s the one that she looked at and thought about me. Of my grandparents, she was the one that I was closest with and spent the most time with. I stayed at her house during the summers and we had all sorts of fun. She was the one who saw I was bored with my small puzzles. I’d been doing 100 and 200-piece puzzles at that point. We went to some garage sales and I found a 500-piece lighthouse puzzle that I liked. I did the puzzle that day and kept doing it. I don’t know how many times I did that puzzle.
I partly have my grandma to thank for my love of puzzles. She encouraged me and fed that growing puzzle addiction. I’m glad that I was able to find this one. I don’t think that I’ll glue and frame it but one of these days I will put it together again.
-
Romantic Town- By night
I don’t remember how long I’ve had this one sitting on my shelves, waiting to be done. For a while, I just wasn’t ready to deal with the chaos of the scene. I’ve done these cartoon puzzles before and I know that they require a level of patience for the amount of what goes on in the scene. You find pieces that look like they belong to one person, but they belong elsewhere and you just have to be ready for those misfits.
Let’s get started!
As I’ve been taking more photos of my puzzles, I’ve realized that my method probably seems quite chaotic. I don’t sort anything and I set pieces down on the completed portions. Really, the only thing that I care about is that all the pieces are flipped over. Oh, and that they’re all on the table, not on the floor. For some reason with this one, I started with the sky and worked down. I’ve been taking this approach more lately, I’ve noticed, rather than moving from section to section until I can connect them. I did appreciate the bit of challenge that this one posed. There was a lot more going on in it than in other puzzles I’d done recently. So I had to think differently about putting it together.
Once I finished this puzzle, I wished that I had the companion. This one is Romantic Town by Night and the companion is Romantic Town by Day. I was able to find it online and bought it, so I’d have the complete set. There’s so much going on in this puzzle. I spent some time just looking at the different antics and groups. I really like that in the middle of all of this chaos, there’s a guy painting. He’s not bothered by anything going on around him. He’s just working away.
-
January Puzzles
I did a lot of puzzling last month, so I thought I’d do a post looking back at them. At some point these puzzles should feature on here individually, but I just wanted to reflect on a month of puzzling.
Yes, that’s one of my dogs in the background. She’s a frequent companion when I’m working on a puzzle. She likes to bring up a toy and hide it in the blankets or stare at me until I throw it. But the other part of the image is the stack of puzzles. I did 17 puzzles, which comes out to 18,600 pieces. Most of them are Educa brand. I wasn’t quite sure what puzzle to do next, so I started on the sailboat and then just kept going through all of the Educa puzzles in my closet.
As of now, my closet is cleared of Educa puzzles save for a 4000 and a 42,000-piece puzzle. I tried to fit the 4000-piece puzzle on my board, but it was too big for the board. It’ll have to wait for the table I’m going to build. A few of these puzzles were new, but most of them had been sitting in my closet for several months, if not longer. So, it was very nice to work through some of the puzzles I’ve had sitting. It makes me feel better about getting new puzzles because at least I’m not just doing new puzzles.
I can’t say that there were any that I hated doing or that were super challenging. I did enjoy some more than others. One of those more than other puzzles was the Apocalypse puzzle from Heye.
I saw this while looking for another puzzle and immediately wanted it. It was so much fun to work on. There was a lot going on, and I think it’d been a while since I worked on a 2000-piece puzzle. I left this one up for a while after I’d finished it because I liked looking at all of the parts of the image. There’s so much going on from the meteor striking the plane at the top to the guys still continuing their card game to the devilish creatures coming out of the split in the road.
This colorful fabrics was another really fun puzzle. When I started sorting through the pieces, I was a little stumped on where to start, but then I started finding green pieces. From there, I kept working to the left, only going on to the next color when I was mostly finished with the current one. It made for a fun challenge on the puzzle. I also liked seeing the puzzle grow out to the left as more and more of it was complete. After I was done, I started looking for more like it, and I just couldn’t find anything.
This is another one that when I finished it, I wanted to find more like it, but I couldn’t. It did, however, get me started on clearing out my Educa puzzles. I didn’t do this because I hate the brand, but rather because I need to work on doing some of my stockpile. Right now I’m in the mood for photographs rather than drawn images and that’s all that I had of Educa in the sizes I could work on on my table. So, it was convenient. I worked on them in layers, too. I did the sea and then the boat, or the landscape and then the sky.
For February, I’m working through my Buffalo Games puzzles. Hopefully, I’ll see another space develop in my closet.
-
Eastern Bloc Telephones
I found this one while searching for other puzzles and fell in love with the colors. I also really liked the look of the different phones. I’m not old enough to have used a rotary phone, but I do kind of miss the days of an actual phone. The cord was always something to play with and fidget with while talking, not that I spent much time on the phone as a kid. I’ve never liked the phone, and hearing it ring would usually give me a spike of dread if I was the only one around. But I do like the look and the contrast of colors on these phones.
Let’s get started!
This puzzle was quite easy to put together and didn’t take all that long, so I forgot to take in progress photos other than this one. Because it lacked the borders that the Goofy puzzle did, I was able to jump from one section to another using the hints of the background or phone color that showed up on the pieces. This is a really fun way to put a puzzle together because you see it grow from just a few to the full size. I’m always interested in seeing where the edges are and which side gets completed first.
These smaller piece puzzles don’t take much time, which is sometimes disappointing because I’m done with a really cool puzzle quite fast. But I do like to keep 500 and 750-piece puzzles around because they’re great for when I’m not quite sure which puzzle I want to do. Sometimes I’m just in between a few puzzles and can’t make up my mind, or I’m just not able to find the one that I really want to work on next. So, I grab a 500-piece puzzle because then I’m doing something I enjoy, and I’ve got a couple of hours to decide what puzzle to do next.
-
Goofy- Treasures from the Vault
I’m not normally one for the Disney puzzles, but I love Goofy so when I saw this one, it made it onto my must-have list and I got it for Christmas. I think I’ve only seen the skiing and sleeping ones, but the how-to cartoons are always fun. They were my favorite as a kid. I still enjoy them today. Looking at some of these, I can just imagine the high jinks that ensue, and I can hear the narrator’s plain tone as he describes how to go about these various activities.
Let’s get started!
Like usual, I just started by flipping pieces over and pulling out the ones that I wanted to start to work on. The green pieces caught my eye, so I started there. This one was a little harder to use one completed part as the jumping off point for the next section because there’s a border between each poster. So, I opted to do a little of both. I jumped off on the green one to the blue one about going to the gym, and then started on other posters. Sometimes, when I’m looking for the pieces I need, other ones catch my eyes and I just find myself moving on to another area. Eventually it all gets done though.
This was a really quick puzzle. I think it might have been less than eight hours. I definitely finished it the same day I started, but I also didn’t have much in the way of breaks I had to take. Puzzles seem to take a little longer during the work week than they do on the weekend. Doing this puzzle has made me want to go find these cartoons. I doubt they’re on YouTube, but I bet they’re somewhere on Disney+. I’ve found a couple on there, but maybe I can find these. To me, there’s nothing like the old Disney cartoons. I prefer the hand-drawn art style as compared to the computerized look today. I’m sure there’s still some hand drawing that goes into today’s cartoons, but it just doesn’t look like what I’m used to.
-
Christmas Doughnut Party
This one was a lucky find at Home Goods when I was Christmas shopping with my mom. I think it was between this one and another Christmas-y one, but I wasn’t thrilled with the image. I didn’t think that Home Goods would have puzzles, other than maybe a few novelty ones. But they had more than I thought. I’m always surprised by the places that do carry puzzles. I notice that the number of places increases during the holidays. At the same time, the places that normally carry puzzles, increase their inventory and variety. Is puzzling only a Christmas activity, or are puzzles viewed as an easy gift? I wish that places would just carry a better stock year-round. As much as I like the convenience of shopping online, there’s nothing like being able to physically browse the shelves.
Let’s get started!
These types of collage puzzles are a lot of fun because you can just start somewhere and keep working based on what you see next. I didn’t have any plans on where to start working. I probably started on that blue doughnut. I honestly can’t remember. I’ve done a handful of puzzles since this one. But that blue one, once I got it done to the edges, I used it as the next area for working. I could see then the color of pieces I was looking for. It just slowly came together that way and eventually I realized where those two corners went.
It’d been a while since I did an Eurographics puzzle. I don’t have anything against the brand, it’s more a matter of not finding images in their catalog that I love. This one, though, was a really fun puzzle. It went together quickly and there wasn’t really a struggle anywhere. Some of the decorations on the doughnuts looked confusing on the pieces and I had to pay more attention, but I don’t mind that. I used to do this type of image a lot because I could find them pretty easily, but they’ve gotten harder to find. So, it was fun to do this one.
-
Carbonated Colors
I can’t remember how long it’s been since I did a puzzle that wasn’t the typical rectangle or square shape. I was on the Springbok website looking for another puzzle, which I’m currently working on, when I found this one and fell in love. I’m not one for gradient puzzles unless they’re like this. I like the ones that have some object or image to create the gradient. I picked this one to do now because I wasn’t sure quite what puzzle to do, but I wanted to do a puzzle. This size puzzle wouldn’t take me very long and by the end, I might have an idea of what I wanted to do.
Let’s get started!
I usually start a puzzle by flipping over pieces and setting aside pieces that all feature the same color or pattern. Often I start putting these together as I’m turning over all the pieces. Sometimes this means I start at a corner, but it usually means it’s somewhere random. This time I started pulling out all of the green pieces. I didn’t plan on working through the puzzle in color order, but I kind of liked it once I got going. I did wind up rotating the puzzle around as I was working. And, yes, I did intentionally leave the middle for the end.
I was really quite happy with this one. I’d forgotten why I love Springbok puzzles. Their piece shape is so unique that what you think is an edge is really not and then you have to find a couple of pieces to make a single piece. This kind of cut is not for everyone. Years ago I did a Springbok with my mom and the pieces drove her nuts. But I think if you’re curious about the random cut pieces, this is a good one to test out. The gradient helps a lot to offset the strangeness of the pieces. It’s a very doable puzzle. I think it took me maybe an hour and a half? Possibly two hours. I wasn’t really counting, but it was a really quick puzzle.
-
Christmas Books
Sometime last weekend, just after I’d completed my latest puzzle, I was looking for a new one to do. I have plenty of options, but I realized that outside of the advent puzzles, I hadn’t done anything Christmas. Personally, I don’t confine myself to doing certain themed puzzles at their designated time during the year. It’s really what ever interests me at the moment. I pulled out this one and another one, I think it was a Wasgij, but I settled on this one because I’ve been liking collages lately.
Let’s get started!
Starting on the right side and working to the left wasn’t intentional. I never really pick ahead of time where I start. I just go by whatever pieces I’m finding more of. A lot of times this means starting with text because it can help to guide you as you’re sorting through pieces. It just happened that this time the pieces I was finding formed the bottom right corner and I just worked my way up and down the books in the puzzle.
Honestly, I think this puzzle took less than a day. I don’t really keep track of my time when I puzzle, but it was a quick one, but it was very fun. I’ve only done the larger White Mountain Puzzle puzzles and I can’t say that I’ve always been thrilled with them. Other than some issues with image quality, I think I just haven’t really enjoyed the pieces. This one, however, I loved. The overall size, which is smaller than the normal, was perfect for my table. The normal size is 24×30 inches, while the smaller one is 20×27 inches. The smaller size means smaller puzzle pieces.
These must be books from the 1960s because I don’t remember any of them. My mom does though. She got excited as she went through the puzzle, pointing out the ones she remembered and which was her favorite. I think I probably would have enjoyed the one about our Christmas customs, but that’s adult me. Child me probably would’ve liked the Candy Cane House. I was never too much of a fan of the Night Before Christmas or the Frosty story, so I’m going to guess that I would’ve liked something about candy canes. Other than the Berenstain Bears Christmas book, I can’t remember having any Christmas books. But my all-time favorite has to be How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It’s a timeless story and I still watch the cartoon every year.
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
No Pieces Missing 