My sweet baby girl gave me this puzzle for Valentine’s Day; she is so generous and kind, and I’m so proud of who she is – I raised a great lady! 💗 Besides all that, she has great taste in puzzle images, how cute is this?!
It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a new Artifact wooden puzzle, or any new wooden puzzle for that matter. It’s so much fun to look through the all the pieces and find the whimsies, and to see all the interesting shapes. The whimsy pieces in this puzzle are all parts of the image…
They are all easy to find except for the interesting shapes at the top of the picture; they are shapes that are shown on the spines of two of the books, it took me a few minutes to figure out what they were. The 3 piece dragon whimsy is so cute, he’s obviously my favorite. 🐲
The geometric shaped pieces made for an interesting assembly, but once you figure out how everything fits together it’s great fun!
I love to see the wooden puzzles from the back, it’s always interesting to look at the shapes and how everything fits together. The cut of this puzzle is something I’ve never seen before; it’s a little simple, but was very entertaining to assemble and placing every piece was a joy.
The artwork by Randal Spangler is so whimsical and adorable, I absolutely love it! I’ve been looking around for more puzzles with his work; it looks as though Artifact and Vermont Christmas Company are the only brands who have Randal Spangler images. I’m thinking I may have to get me some more puzzles with his artwork!
Thank you again to The Baby Princess for this beautiful puzzle! 😘
My sweet darlin’ daughter took it upon herself to be the Valentine’s fairy this year and put together gift bags for the entire family – I raised a fantastic girl who grew up to be the most amazing, selfless, thoughtful woman I know. The whole family is doing their best to get through all the “firsts” after losing a loved one, and she decided to try and make our first Valentine’s Day without her beloved grandmother a good one for us all. I’m so proud of her and how she truly wants to take care of us all. 💝
She did a great job, and of course she went a little overboard and for my present I received the most adorable wooden puzzle from Artifact! How sweet is my girl? So sweet!
This puzzle is just the cutest! The artwork is by Randal Spangler, and I don’t think I’ve assembled any other puzzles with his artwork before. I don’t know where he’s been hiding, but I adore the look of this one and hopefully I’ll be able to find more puzzles with his images on them. 🙂
I’ve only just started working on it, and have already succumbed to my OCD; the pieces are all laid out on the board in very orderly rows. I started with the pieces just all over the board willy nilly, but my brain can’t function well with things in such disarray. And there’s something very soothing about getting all the pieces lined up neatly, I can’t really explain it. My hunch is that many of us who love jigsaw puzzles have a little bit of the OCD, and putting things right by getting the picture put back together gives us immense satisfaction.
The pieces are very squared off and geometrical looking, but that doesn’t mean it’s overly easy, because it most definitely hasn’t been so far.
I love the interesting cut and the squared off connectors, and I’m looking forward to seeing the completed puzzle – it’s so adorable! It shouldn’t take too long, the puzzle is only 182 pieces so it should be completed today if all goes well.
Thank you to my darlin’ sweet baby girl for the amazing gift, I love it – but I love you more! 💗
My husband surprised me with this puzzle; and not only was I surprised that he bought it for me, I was surprised that he picked such a great image too. It turned out to be a fantastic, well-made, very challenging puzzle and I absolutely loved it. Well done hubby!
The image is of the Prague clock, which I knew nothing about when I received this puzzle, but it lead me to do some research on it and I was fascinated. It was built in 1410, and is the oldest working astronomical clock in the world! The clock face gives you all sorts of information; if you know how to read it you can tell the date, how long until sunrise or sunset, the location of the Sun on the ecliptic (which tells you the date in relation to the sign of the zodiac), what lunar phase the moon is currently in, and, oh yes, it tells time too (both current standard time and Ancient Bohemian Time). It makes for a great puzzle image too!
Nautilus puzzles is a newer wooden puzzle company, started in 2018. I was highly impressed by the quality of the puzzles, but even more so by the cut of the pieces. The cut is exceptional; it is designed so that every single piece touches at least one of the whimsy pieces – which makes for wonderfully varied shapes and a much more challenging assembly. Their catalog is large and varied as well, and along with some images you see quite often in puzzles they’ve got some very unique images as well. They weren’t in business when I started my wooden jigsaw puzzle experimentthree years ago, because I definitely would have given these a try. Their smallest puzzles start at around $15, which is quite affordable in my book.
If you’re into astrology, you’ll recognize many of the whimsy shapes. I recognized the zodiac symbols, but not all the rest of them.
This is quite a large number of whimsies for only a 500 piece puzzle, and they all match the “theme” of the image. It was fun to sort through the pieces and find all the interesting whimsies, it’s one of my favorite parts of working with wooden puzzles. 🙂
All the whimsies were themed towards time, astrology, astronomy, etc. In this corner you can see the phases of the moon! That’s going an extra step, instead of just throwing whimsies around in between pieces they’ve put some thought into the design. It made for quite an entertaining assembly, and I will definitely be buying another puzzle from this company.
Hubby did an awesome job picking out this puzzle, it was a joy to assemble and I absolutely loved it! It was exceptionally well made, expertly designed, and was great fun to put together – it is very highly recommended!
*Also, as usual, I recommend giving wooden puzzles a try if you haven’t before. There are many affordable companies out there, like Nautilus, and we puzzlers are definitely worth a splurge now and then. If you can’t bring yourself to buy one, how about requesting one for a birthday or Christmas present? You’re so worth it!
Details:
Title: Prague Clock
Artist: Unknown
Brand: Nautilus Puzzles
Piece count: 500 pieces
Size: Approx. 19 x 14 in. (48 x 36 cm)
Purchased: New
Quality:
Board: Excellent, 4mm thick wood
Cutting: Excellent
Image: Excellent
Box: Very good, pieces come in a cloth bag
Fit: Excellent
Puzzle Dust: None
Piece cut: Random cut with whimsies
Piece shapes: Excellent variety
Finish: Slightly shiny finish
Overall Rating: Excellent, most highly recommended
Art City by Robert Williams – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 1001 pieces
I love unique and interesting images, and there’s nothing like this one anywhere but at Mr. Bob Puzzles. The colors, the movement of the artwork, it’s just astounding and I absolutely adored this puzzle and the assembly!
The first thing I do when I get a wooden puzzle is to look through all the pieces to see the shapes, hopefully whimsies, and get a feel for the colors and the image. This one definitely didn’t disappoint. Not only where there plenty of whimsical shapes, there were a lot of words too – so fun!
I didn’t even notice when I was going through them that “ciao” is spelled wrong, in fact if I hadn’t received an email from the company I probably never would have realized it! They were horrified at the mistake and have offered to fix it immediately. Honestly I don’t think I’ll bother, it makes it more interesting I think. 😉
The whimsy pieces have a roaring 20’s feel, jazzy and fun and they made for fun surrounding pieces too.
The image made for a difficult assembly, but it was the lovely kind of difficult that keeps you engaged and engrossed.
This woman taking a picture with her iPhone is the artist’s way of bringing the image into the present as many of the whimsy pieces suggest older times. (Or so Mr. Bob tells me 🙂 )
This assembly was absolutely the right amount of challenging, but not too difficult as to make it frustrating. The cut of the pieces seems mostly regular, but it is quite deceptive and not at all as easy as it looks. If it were too easy it wouldn’t be much fun at all, so thankfully these puzzles have struck an excellent balance.
Even with the shipping from Australia, I’ve found Mr. Bob Puzzles to be relatively reasonably priced; with the exchange rate for the Australian dollar shoppers in the US start out with a bit of a discount already. And with the wildfires in Australia I also like the idea of sending some of my puzzle money down there.
My husband surprised me this past week and bought me a new wooden puzzle! Then he went one better and got one from a company I’ve never tried before, AND he picked out an image that I really like. He is the sweetest man, and after 31 years he still loves me and loves to surprise me. 💗
The image is The Prague Clock, or The Prague Astronomical Clock – which I must admit that I had never heard of before and knew nothing about. I’ve been reading about it since he presented me with the puzzle and am now completely fascinated by it. Did you know it’s the oldest working astronomical clock in the world? It was built in 1410 and is still working today; and it’s amazing the things this clock face can tell you.
Astronomical clocks are designed to show you astronomical information (obviously), like the positions of the sun, moon, and certain constellations. The Prague clock, however, shows this information and much more. If you know how to read it you can tell the date, how long until sunrise or sunset, the location of the Sun on the ecliptic (which tells you the date in relation to the sign of the zodiac), what lunar phase the moon is currently in, and, oh yes, it tells time too (both current standard time and Ancient Bohemian Time). There may be more, I haven’t read through everything yet or committed all the information to memory.
I’m fascinated by the clock, and I’m excited to get started assembling the puzzle! I’ve looked through the pieces and picked out all the whimsies, and hopefully all the edge pieces too. The puzzle is on the small side, 19 x 14 inches, and only 500 pieces, so I’ve decided to just lay the pieces out on the board and work it that way with no trays to look through. I think it’s partly because of the discussion we’ve been having in the comments about the merits of sorting or not sorting; so I’ve decided to give not sorting another try. We’ll see how that goes. 😉
My Jigsaw Journal 