Imagination by Robert Williams – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 525 pieces

Oh my. This puzzle. What a FANTASTIC image for puzzling! I had the best time putting this one together, and I’m sorry that it isn’t still being produced because it was an amazing assembly and I loved every single piece. 💖

Even though I picked it out myself, sort of, (told hubby which images of Mr. Bob’s puzzles I liked best), when it arrived I was a little scared of the image and thought it would be really difficult. It was put away for a while, then – well, you know. Finally, it was pulled out from it’s place in the to-do pile and….HOLY GUACAMOLE was it fun! I was completely wrong about how difficult it would be. It turns out this is, in my humble opinion, a perfect image for a jigsaw puzzle.

You may not think so looking at it, and to be honest neither did I at first. To me it is beautiful art, but I thought it would be an extremely demanding assembly, especially with the deceptively difficult cut of Mr. Bob’s puzzles. It wasn’t. It was the perfect amount of challenging. I know I am repeating myself, but this puzzle was the best, most entertaining puzzle I’ve done in quite some time. Click the link above to check out their website if you’re interested, they have many unique images that you won’t see anywhere else, and they are excellent quality wooden puzzles.

As usual, it began with pulling all the whimsies while laying out the pieces. There were some special ones in this puzzle – hubby asked them to put the name of my blog in the whimsies! (He must have remembered when they cut my name into a puzzle and I said “Wouldn’t it be cool to have the name of the blog cut out in puzzle pieces?” What a sweet, thoughtful husband I have!)

Having thick wooden pieces means that you can cut out wonderful shapes; and part of the fun is seeing them – and the interesting shapes of the pieces around them. Mr. Bob’s logo and his silhouette are cut into every puzzle, along with a whimsy of Australia. The rest of the whimsies are different depending on the image of the puzzle itself.

When using lasers to cut wooden puzzles the only real limits are the designer’s imagination. (Plus, they can cut out fun things like the name of a puzzle blog!)

How cool is that? So cool! But I have to tell you that even without these words in the puzzle I would still be in love with it. The colors and textures, the movement, the lines running through it, the fabulous quality, the perfect amount of challenge – everything worked together to make for the most pleasurable puzzling this professed puzzle geek has had in a quite a while.

Love, love, LOVED IT! 😍

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Mr. Bob’s Puzzles has grown significantly since I reviewed two of their puzzles two years ago – almost to the day! It seems like much more time has gone by; through our email correspondence I feel as if I know Mr. Bob himself personally and we’re old friends. After my reviews I gave suggestions to improve their products, and it was unbelievably well received; they truly wanted to make the best puzzles they could.

I encouraged him to put more of his own artwork on his puzzles: because I adore his digital art, it is most definitely my pile of pieces! This puzzle is one of his creations, and it made for such a fun assembly that I couldn’t stop gushing to him about it. I’ve done several of Mr. Bob’s puzzles, and the ones I’ve enjoyed the most have been the ones with his artwork; Save the Whales, Art City, and now Imagination joins the club.

Last year Mr. Bob’s Puzzles received an order for 53,000 custom puzzles from a major Australian corporation as gifts for their staff – it called for renting a new, larger space, establishing a bank of laser cutters, and a production facility to cope with the higher output. They got them all produced and shipped in about three months – on time and on budget. Bob tells me that it amounted to cutting around 8,000,000 pieces (approximately 375 miles of laser cutting)! 😮

Well done everyone at Mr. Bob’s Puzzles, you’re going places! And we knew you when…