Christmas Spirit by Susan Winget – Ceaco – 577 pieces

This special edition Ceaco was quite a difficult puzzle to assemble, but I’m glad that I finally put it together. Mom bought this at the thrift store at least 5 years ago, and paid a whole 99 cents for it! I can’t say it was overly enjoyable, but it wasn’t too bad either.

Ceaco came out with a few puzzles backed in velvet many years ago, and this is the second one mom found at a thrift store. They’re interesting to work with…

Beautiful to look at isn’t it? Not so much fun to assemble on a fabric covered board though; the velvet grabs onto the fabric and sliding sections around is almost impossible. The irregular border meant that I didn’t start there, I started with the words in the middle. When you don’t start with the border all you can do is “guesstimate” where everything goes, and it’s never perfect; there’s always adjusting and wiggling pieces around to get things exactly where they belong. Once the pieces were laid down they didn’t want to let go of my beautiful fabric board; and because there are whimsy pieces in the puzzle, lifting a completed section to move it meant pieces falling out. Frustrating. Annoying. So, because the border wasn’t put together first, things had to be moved around to fit together properly – and the damn velvet made it so difficult!

The pieces are thicker than a regular Ceaco puzzle, and the velvet adds even more thickness. Otherwise the quality is only fair/good. Many of the pieces were bent and had image lifting off, the fit was very tight, and the finish is shiny. It’s a beautiful image, but working with this puzzle had me to ready to say NO MORE CHRISTMAS PUZZLES!

There were quite a few whimsy pieces as well as these letters, but so many of them were two pieces that weren’t easy to find on the initial sort – that means I didn’t take a picture of anything other than this.

I wish I’d enjoyed this more, but I just didn’t. 🤷‍♀️

If you find one at a thrift store, or somewhere out in the world – give it a try. Hopefully you’ll like it more than I did.