One of my favourite pastimes is to do a jigsaw puzzle hence my sister-in-law passed me a mixture of four 1000-piece puzzles and one with 500 pieces to do. Whilst I love puzzles, I hate clutter so I decided to do them all in quick succession.
I traded in most of my Candy Crush and napping time to do the puzzles in good daylight! When I do puzzles, I prefer to complete all the borders first. Then I will group them, for example, faces, animals, one colour, buildings etc. Then I will start on the easy and most obvious items on the puzzle. I leave the indistinctive sections to the end, for example, the sky.
The first puzzle that I completed was the Tropical Lagoon made from Jumbo. I love the quality of the cardboard. It is thick and has lovely surfaces. It didn’t take me long to complete this one.
Next, I did the Blooming Paris and Village Marketplace made from Corner Pieces. This was my first time piecing this brand. I did not realise they were from The Works. The quality is so-so, not very thick but sturdy enough. What I like about this puzzle is that on the back of the puzzle, there were their Corner Pieces logos. Sometimes when I find it hard to match, I will peep over to check if it’s in the correct orientation. I had a look at this brand and they look very good value. I would consider them next time.
My fourth puzzle was from WHSmith called A Snowy Christmas Evening. I tend not to do puzzles out of season and I didn’t have the same motivation for this one as I did the others. Also, I’m not keen on blurry images like a watercolour painting. I find it so hard to see the brush strokes etc. Having said all that, it didn’t take me long to finish this final 1000-piece puzzle.
I left the 500-piece Barbican Conservatory drawn by Lucille Clerc, made by Print Club London x Luckies until last. Each puzzle’s pieces are quite big, bigger than the pieces from a typical 1000-piece puzzle. It comes with a cloth bag and a cheat picture. I have to keep using the cheat picture to match each piece. The one-colour tone was quite tough. It took roughly 5 hours to complete.
So all done now and will donate to a charity shop for others to enjoy!