feature: wooden
Mushroom Glow by Tomasz Pietrzyk (Artifact)
Ash and I did an Artifact 286-piece puzzle, “Mushroom Glow” by Tomasz Pietrzyk (https://www.tomekpietrzyk.art/en/), puzzle design by Matt Lyon. We broke into it last Tuesday (11/11) & got about halfway finished, then picked it up & finished it today. The bottom quarter of the puzzle was really challenging — pretty dark and hard with some […]
Winter Boughs by Laura McElfresh (Bewilderness)
Bewilderness (and at Etsy), 160 wooden pieces, tesselations. “Winter Boughs” by Laura McElfresh. Okay, wow, this was hard. A good third or half the pieces were all the exact same shape. There was one very large whimsy (pine-cone cut-outs) and a number of smaller whimsies (also pine-cones) and then a bunch of other pieces with […]
Circles by Coral Bourgeois
Another of the puzzles from AreYouGame, this one “Circles” by Coral Bourgeois, in 309 pieces. There are not whimsies precisely, but there are some spirograph-like regular shapes embedded.
Lovely Cat Ravensburger wooden
Ash and I knocked off another small Ravensburger wooden (laser-cut) puzzle, cat themed! The whimsies are actually quite nice.
Eyes Full of Stars by Marie-Claude Fournier, cut design by Mark Cappitella
578 pieces, 440x352x7mm (17.5″ x 14″). Canadian artist Marie-Claude Fournier. Victory puzzles, in their “Artisan series”. Puzzle cut design by Mark Cappitella. Loving everything about this — the art, which is gorgeous; the puzzle cut, which is tricky and delightful; the feel of the pieces — thick, solid, curvy. They have the sharpness of laser-cut […]
Freddie Mercury by Lee Topp, Puzzly 527
Just finished an amazing laser-cut puzzle by Puzzly, 527 pieces and really fabulous whimsies — including a super large multi-piece whimsy. All themed! The artist is “Lee Topp”, who is described on Puzzly’s Freddie Mercury puzzle page as: Lee Topp is a south coast based mixed media artist taking inspiration from Music and Legends. Influenced […]
L’Ermitage by Paul Berthon, Sr. B
I love the Sr. B hand-cut puzzles, so it’s a real treat to get one from Hoefnagel. This one is “L’ermitage“, an 1897 Art Nouveau piece by Paul Berthon (1872-1909), used as a poster for the revue L’ermitage. The original seems to be in the Davis Collection at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The […]
Optimago, Off for the Honeymoon by Frederick Morgan
This 266-piece Optimago (1979-2005) puzzle is listed as an “Enigma”, with no image available. As with a lot of vintage puzzles, and puzzles made of old European art, the colors were a little bit muddy. They look a lot crisper in the photo than they did to my eyes! Maybe it’s my eyes that are […]
Hotel Melrose Lobby by Perkins Harnly
I really enjoyed this 250-piece puzzle from Puzzly (via Hoefnagel). It was a fast solve, with a mix of traditional puzzle pieces and whimsies, like the two Wentworth puzzles I just did — but I enjoyed the puzzling experience more. I think the wood was a bit thicker than in those two Wentworths (they have […]
Apro Vision, “Moon Castle”
Via Hoefnagel, I got this laser-cut 152-piece (“A4 size”) puzzle from “Apro Vision”, which appears to be one of the randomly generated names that Chinese laser cutters create to sell on Amazon. It’s a pretty cool and tricky image — many little doors in various sizes, plus some gears, and trees in various teacups (surrealist […]
Purr-fect Night by Mary Stubberfield
Wentworth Puzzles, 240 pieces, “Purr-fect Night” by Mary Stubberfield, via Hoefnagel. Another thin, MDF wood, mix of traditional pieces with etched whimsies. I liked this art better than the owl puzzle that was also in the Hoefnagel pack, but the puzzling experience otherwise was very similar.
Owlets in the Moonlight, Rosalind Solomon
A Wentworth 250-piece puzzle by Rosalind Solomon, by way of Hoefnagel. Although it was owl-themed, I wasn’t in love with the art — I’m not a fan of works where a large picture has the center hollowed out to have a different scene, or a collage. I did enjoy the multitudinous owl whimsies, though. … […]
Richard Friend, Limberlost Woods
The third of three Artifact / Ecru puzzles that Yael loaned to me. The image looks initially a bit overwhelming, but all the trees have distinct patterns (a small number of repeats) that it made it easy and fun to assemble small pieces, and then match edges to other pieces. This was a 355-piece puzzle […]
Sky Village by Heather Gauthier, Artifact Ecru 409
“Sky Village” by Heather Gauthier, Ecru, 409 pieces. This is the second of a batch of three puzzles I borrowed from Yael. It was a steady, not difficult, solve, with lots of different areas of variously colored fruits, various textures on the animals, beads & ribbons, all on a damask-style background. (Looking at Gauthier’s website, […]
Roch Urbaniak, Unexpected Visitor
My neighbor and I have a lovely little neighborhood wooden puzzle lending program, and she has this Artifact puzzle I’ve been yearning to do — “Unexpected Visitor” by Roch Urbaniak. The Urbaniak image is beautiful, and the cut design by David Figueiras was lovely — geometric rows, plus fun astronomical / night themed whimsies, with […]
The Big Apple, Zen
Ash and I knocked out another Zen Puzzle, this one, “The Big Apple“. Ash and I recognized 4 out of 5 whimsies, but such is our financial innocence that we were like, “why is there a cow in New York City?” “Financial innocence” sounds nicer (& judgy of other people instead of judgy of ourselves) […]
Winter Reading Nook by Aimee Stewart, Zen teaser
I think it’s fair to say that the decline in democracy in this country has made it difficult for me to do jigsaw puzzles. But Ash and I still manage to knock out a small one periodically. The small puzzles from Zen are very doable even in a highly distracted mindframe. “Winter Reading Nook” is […]
Victory (original), “Gay Harbour, Cornwall”
I think I can call these boats, right? not ships? From the Hoefnagel collection. This is a “Victory Puzzle”, from the original UK company of that name, from the 1950s, with about 350 pieces per Hoefnagel. Hoefnagel description: 350 pieces, hand-cut, irregular connectors. Victory Plywood Jig-saw Puzzles were made in the 1950s in England and […]
Sunrise in a Winter Forest, Zen Puzzles
“Sunrise in a Winter Forest” is one of several Zen Puzzles that Ash and I are working our way through. This is a peaceful winter scene, but I do wonder at some of the shadows — why such large blobs that are not apparent on the trees themselves? Are these shadows like the shadows in […]
Street Art, Zen Puzzles
Ash and I really enjoyed this small-ish puzzle from Zen Puzzles, “Street Art“, in the 125-piece size. I’m actually not sure what animal it is — a dog? with the tongue — a lion? — but it’s so colorful and cool that it was a pleasure to look at it. Two of the whimsies seem […]
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