It’s a Hoot – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 259 pieces
This is a striking image that was a lot of fun to work, and not really difficult at all. Mom and I assembled this one together, and we had a great time doing it. It didn’t take as much time as we thought it would with the repetitive cut, I think it actually makes assembly a little bit easier. You can see in the picture below the repetitive shapes, they’re like little owls!
I love working with these wonderful wooden puzzles. I like the feel of them as they fall into place, I love looking at the interesting shapes, I love the smell of the wood, and the care they take in packaging the pieces. They’re just excellent in every way.
I highly recommend the “extra difficult cut” you can get with some of the Wentworth puzzles. This is the second challenging cut that I’ve done, and I actually found it easy to work with. I’m not sure if I’ll be trying the winter scenes though, lots of snow and trees is too close to winter aspen for me.
It’s so wonderfully bright and colorful, I’d love to hang it on the wall for a while, but there’s no bleeping way I would glue any of these wooden puzzles! They’re too much fun to only assemble one time; mom and I loved this puzzle and will definitely be doing it over and over again.
The Physical Impossibility of Sadness in the Mind of the Befriended by Vikram Madan – Artifact Puzzles – 292 pieces
That is quite the title! But let me tell you, this less than 300 piece puzzle is worthy of such a great big name. What a wonderful treat it was to assemble, it’s bright colorful image and interesting and challenging piece shapes made it a delight to put together.
Since the wooden puzzle experiment I can’t seem to stop myself from spending lots of time on the websites for Liberty, Artifact, Peaceful, and Wentworth puzzles; there are so many fabulous images and interesting piece shapes to look at! While looking through the Artifact website I found this puzzle with the most wonderful shaped pieces and I couldn’t help myself. In my defense, I was left unsupervised. 😇
They call this piece cut “split tendrils”, I call it amazing! It took a few minutes to wrap my brain around how the pieces fit together; it makes for a more challenging puzzle but it’s the best kind of challenging! The whimsies are so adorable and they fit in with the piece shapes rather seamlessly. I can’t recommend this company enough, they have so many different types of cuts to choose from!
This artwork shows a creature sitting at the table having a bowl of cereal with a wall full of memories of adventures with his friend. It’s so sweet, and I love the picture as much as I love the piece cut. It’s just a great puzzle all around and I’m sure it will be assembled many more times. Amazingly entertaining!
With the obvious piece shapes it’s a bit easier to see the image from farther away, so to speak. Adorable artwork, amazing pieces – so much fun!
I’ve never really made New Year’s Resolutions, but I’m going to do my best to treat myself to more awesome wooden puzzles in 2018! I hope everyone has a safe and fun New Year’s Eve, and may the next year be filled with love, laughter, kindness, and many, many fun puzzles! 🎇🎉🎇
Vintage St. Nicholas by Alison Lee – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 500 pieces
Challenging puzzle, but gorgeous and fun with excellent whimsies! Take a look….
My last Christmas puzzle of the year, I did quite a few for someone who doesn’t really like most Christmas puzzles. I’m posting this before any presents are unwrapped, so we’ll see if any of my family, or even Santa, gifted me puzzles this year. 🎄
My mother decided she absolutely had to take advantage of the black Friday sale at Wentworth and got this puzzle and one other for 35% off! (The other is an art nouveau collage, 750 pieces – SO BEAUTIFUL!) We started this one together at her house, but it was quite the challenge so it wasn’t finished by the time I left; she finished it on her own late into the night.
First thing for us to do when assembling a wooden puzzle is to pull all the whimsy pieces we can find and get a picture of those separately. We are still amazed and delighted at every new shape we find – we’re like little kids on Christmas morning! Next we try to assemble the edge, but they’re so sneaky about the cutting that we have never found all the edge pieces on the first try. Still, it’s fun to give it a shot.
The assembly was quite time consuming, much more so than we’d expected. The piece shapes are mostly like the random cut of a cardboard puzzle, but they are cut in a way that makes the assembly more difficult and more fun. The shapes aren’t fantastical and wild, but it doesn’t matter as much because the working of the puzzle itself is such a pleasure.
I love the look of all the vintage Santa characters, they are all so different, but similar too. So sweet and lovely to look at. I think we’ll assemble this one next year at my house so I get to be the one staying up late into the night! ⏰
The Night Before Christmas by Steve Crisp – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 40 pieces
Love, love, love these puzzles! I had to post The Night Before Christmas today, it’s Christmas Eve – Santa’s coming tonight!! 🎅
I haven’t done any of the Steve Crisp houses before, and having seen the detail on this tiny one I’m really wanting to try one of the 1000 piece house puzzles. It looks like they would be lots of fun; I’ve never really looked at them before, though I’m not sure why. Probably because there are so many puzzles and so little time. I guess that means the wish list is going to be getting a little bit bigger. Perhaps it’ll get smaller as well, if Santa brings me a puzzle or two. I’ve tried to be good this year – I’m not always successful, but trying has to be worth something right? (Besides, being well-behaved isn’t nearly as much fun as being a little naughty now and then! 😈)
This was another Christmas puzzle that isn’t the “normal” scene, and the assembly was wonderful. You can see on the roof of the house the whimsy piece of Santa, it’s incredibly detailed; there was also a stocking, a present, a snowflake, and a Christmas tree. I loved this little puzzle!
Santa and his Team – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 25 pieces
This puzzle was the easiest of the “cracker” puzzles, but still fun to put together. You can see all the whimsies clearly in this puzzle because of the lighter color; a reindeer, penguin, snowman, Christmas tree, and Santa. 5 whimsies in a 25 piece puzzle, that’s a pretty good ratio!
I love the reindeer’s faces in this one, they’re just so darn cute! I get distracted by the snowman right on Santa’s face, but that’s one of the drawbacks of wooden puzzles that I’ve found. When the puzzle image is light the piece shape is very obvious and can pull your eye from seeing the picture as a whole. If you scroll back up and look at the house, on the bottom floor the piece shapes aren’t as obvious as they are on or near the roof. Still, for me, it doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the assembly, they’re still fun to put together.
These were the last 2 of the “cracker” puzzles, and you won’t be surprised to hear that I loved every one of them. There are a few more Christmas micro puzzles that I haven’t put together yet, but I’ve sent them with my mom on her trip to visit one of my sisters for the holidays. They’re the perfect size for traveling; they don’t take up much room in your luggage and they don’t take up much room when you’re assembling them either. I guess I’ll save them for Christmas in July on the blog – only 7 months to go! 🙂
Playful Santa – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 25 pieces
It doesn’t look like it, but this micro puzzle was more difficult than it looked. I’m almost embarrassed at how long it took me to put these 25 pieces together! It’s interesting to me how such a small puzzle with very few pieces can be cut to make the assembly so much more challenging. Aside from the whimsy pieces, the cuts don’t seem that unusual, but they’re the just the right amount of difficult.
The Christmas cracker puzzles are so beautiful and come in such interesting packaging; they will make excellent stocking stuffers for next year. I can’t wait to see if there will be new micro puzzles to choose from! (I think I’d better start saving now)
Festive Angel by Louise Anglicas – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 36 pieces
This beautiful angel had a much more intricate cut which added to the challenge, in addition to being shaped. Loved it!
As someone who usually does 1000 piece puzzles (and has even assembled the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle) it’s amazing how much I enjoy these micro puzzles. It’s wonderful to work with the wood pieces, and even though it doesn’t seem like they would be much fun, they are astonishingly entertaining. I think they might even have helped me enjoy Christmas puzzles more, because I had absolutely no hesitation about ordering every single one they had available! 🎄
My Jigsaw Journal 