I finally was able to get Snow White off the board and safely sandwiched between 2 large pieces of cardboard. She will be residing under my bed until we are ready to assemble the entire puzzle.
Therefore, I have finally begun the next section – Cinderella! I worked a little bit on trays this morning before I went to spend the day with my mom, and the rest of it I did this evening after my husband and I cleared off the board. It doesn’t look like much in the picture, but that is 250 pieces already assembled 🙂 All the flesh on everyone is done; the footman and the driver’s face and hands, the fairy godmother’s face and hands along with part of her cloak, and Cinderella’s face and chest. I was also able to put together most of the door and the spire on the coach, and some of the horse’s reins and harness. Not too shabby for the first day!
I’ve been wanting to get back to work on this, and I’m so glad I was finally able to. I actually feel better now that I’ve gotten going again. And unbelievably, I’m actually looking forward to assembling the film reel! It was intimidating when I saw how many pieces there were in Snow White’s reel, but I’m no longer intimidated and am eager to get it put together. I’m not sure when I’ll be starting that part, but I know I’ll be enjoying it once I do.
This is one of the sections that looks as if it will be more difficult than most, so hopefully it won’t take too much longer than the 20 days it took to finish the first section. Day 1 complete!
Just a quick update, Cinderella will be the next section of the puzzle I’m going to tackle. I began sorting the Fantasia section today and found a damaged piece with part of the image missing. I called Ravensburger and am being sent a replacement bag. Since I don’t think I want to sort through 4000 pieces to find the specific one I’m looking to replace, I’ll wait on Fantasia for the time being. They were super helpful, even though technically this puzzle isn’t on sale in US right now and won’t be until next year. (I ordered it from a German puzzle website)
Interesting side note, I have always pronounced it Ray-vensburger, and apparently they pronounce it Rah-vensburger.  It sounds so weird to me! I know they’re right and I’m wrong, but I’ve been pronouncing it incorrectly for so long, to my ears they sound like the ones who are mistaken 🙂
I hope to be done sorting Cinderella tomorrow, perhaps I may even be able to start working on the puzzle itself. It seems taking a break was a nice idea, but what I really want is to be working on the Disney puzzle. It may be that after a few sections I’ll be more ready for a break, but for now I’m anxious to get back to work on it!
Success! I have finished one section of this enormous puzzle and I am soooo proud of myself! I can’t sit and work for hours, so there were a lot of 5 and 10 minute increments where I was able to work. From reading posts and group discussions online I have seen that most people keep track of their actual time (hours) spent working on these large piece count puzzles, but that seems more difficult/tedious in my case. So I’m just keeping track of days. Started on September 28 and finished today, October 17. Twenty days. That’s actually better than I anticipated. 4032 pieces, the largest I have ever done 🙂
It’s small, but I’ve put a tape measure across the bottom of the picture above so you can see the size of it; 54 inches wide and about 38 inches tall. I took another picture with the tape measure along the side and a few things on top to give you even more scale – Â my husband’s longest golf club (driver) and an iPhone. It looks like a regular sized puzzle in the pictures so I wanted to show just how big it actually is.
My hubby’s driver, and an iPhone in the lower right corner – this is no small puzzle!
It was not an easy puzzle, but I enjoyed the challenge and it wasn’t so difficult as to be frustrating or tedious. The twinklies at the end were the most formidable, but once I got going I became more comfortable with the colors I was working with and each piece became easier to find. There were shapes repeated, especially along the edges, where paying close attention was a must. The pieces fit perfectly but the shading or something wasn’t exactly right. There were several times where I thought a piece was placed properly only to find that it wasn’t when adjacent pieces were added. It seemed in the interior of the puzzle that these happened only in 2’s. Perhaps each piece is repeated only once? It did not, however, diminish my enjoyment of the puzzle, and only added to my sense of pride and accomplishment once all the pieces were placed in their proper positions!
I’m giving myself a few days break, and may work a couple of normal sized puzzles in the meantime. I’m currently working on a 1000 piece Schmidt puzzle by Colin Thompson that I’m enjoying very much, and have a couple of 500 piece Dowdle puzzles to choose from as well. A little 500 piece puzzle might just be the palate cleanser I need before starting another section.
After consulting with my Puzzle Posse *mom and husband* ;), we have decided that the next section to be worked will be Fantasia. I want to get the most difficult sections done earlier on so I’m going to be alternating between the easier sections and the difficult ones. Fantasia, Cinderella and Peter Pan seem to me to be the most challenging, so they are the ones to be completed earlier in this process. Then nearer the end I won’t have to dread doing the more demanding sections because they will have been completed months ago!
I will probably start sorting Fantasia tomorrow and it may take a day or two to sort through them. Perhaps that will be a long enough break, perhaps not. We’ll have to wait and see how I feel, and whether or not I get antsy to get back to work. Of course, I can’t start work on the new section until we get the first one off the board, onto the big piece of cardboard and then figure out where we’re going to store it. Yikes. I need a bigger house!
Snow White and her forest friends are almost finished!
Lots of momentum today, spurring me on toward the end; I had to make myself stop and take a picture. My eyes feel as if Mr. Sandman has been throwing sand in them for hours, but I wish I could stay awake and keep going, it’s so close!
There are 189 pieces left (I was WAY off yesterday when I said there were about 600 pieces remaining) and I’m hopeful that I will be able to complete this section tomorrow. Good thing I’ve got my Snow White soundtrack ready to sing along to! *Heigh ho! Heigh ho! Â Just one more day to go!*
Grocery shopping is first on my list of tasks to accomplish tomorrow; my family for some bizarre reason expects that there be food in the house 😉 So after trips to 2 stores I hope to be home for the remainder of the day and not in too much pain to be able to work on the puzzle. I think my family would really enjoy making their own sandwiches for dinner, don’t you? It’ll be like a picnic!
Stay tuned everyone, I hope to have pictures of the completed section in 24 hours!
So much accomplished today with the help of my hubby! Got all the dark blue between the edges and filmstrip finished, and even got a few twinklies done. It’s looking gorgeous, and I’m super proud of myself even though it isn’t even finished yet!
I will admit, though, that I did not have the top edge assembled correctly, and had to remove most of the edge pieces at the top before finishing the inside pieces. Once I had all the regular dark blue pieces inserted correctly I was then able to put the edges in their proper place. Even then, you must be very careful and look closely because there were several pieces that fit perfectly in more than 1 spot, and only when you look carefully can you see that the images do not line up perfectly. This is not a problem I have ever encountered with a Ravensburger puzzle, but perhaps because this is a specialty puzzle with a much larger piece count it was more difficult to come up with a template that had no repeating patterns. Next section of the puzzle, the edge will be the next to the last thing I assemble for sure!
There are probably around 600 pieces or so left. I didn’t keep track from the beginning, but I will when I start the next section. There are still a few days of work left to do, depending on how much I am able to work on it, but the end is near 🙂 The twinklies are going to be the most difficult part as far as I can tell, but hopefully it won’t be too terribly time consuming.
My Jigsaw Journal 