This gorgeous image by Josephine Wall was thoroughly entertaining, more than a little bit of a challenge, and wonderful quality – in short – the perfect puzzle at the perfect time.

It’s been a while since I’ve assembled an Anatolian puzzle, and it was my first of their smaller piece counts. The pieces were lovely to hold, a good thickness and fit together beautifully. You can see from the picture above that the image reproduction is excellent; the colors were lovely, and even where the details in the artwork seem to blur into one another the actual image is crisp and clear.

I’ve done only a handful of images by Josephine Wall; I find the artwork to be dazzling, exquisite, pretty, pleasing to the eye and a host of other words that fail me at the moment. But for me, and only for me, they’re not always what I’m looking for in a puzzle image. It’s always so different for each and every puzzler, we all have something specific that we are or aren’t looking for.

I’ve learned that gorgeous pictures don’t always make for entertaining puzzles. I can love to look at something, appreciate it’s balance, color, motif, etc. – but know that if it were cut up into little pieces that it wouldn’t be fun for me to put back together. It’s something you get a feel for the more puzzles you assemble, and you find what images you most enjoy putting together.

After many, many, many puzzles I am still learning. Sometimes a puzzle that wouldn’t normally catch my eye makes for a fantastically entertaining assembly and I find myself surprised by it. Mom used to buy puzzles at the thrift store that I would never have gotten for myself; and I found myself shocked at how enjoyable they were. The opposite can also be true; I purchase an image that I’m in love with, only to find that the actual assembly was disappointing for me.

Josephine Wall creates stunningly beautiful works of art; but they’re not always the easiest to assemble as puzzles. Call of the Sea is gorgeous, and I consider myself lucky to have found it in a smaller piece count that brought down the level of difficulty. I didn’t want too much of a challenge with this one, so I went for the tiny piece count – I’m a chicken of the sea! 🤣