Colorful Boats On The Lake

Brand: Puzzlebug
Pieces: 500
Size: 46cm x 28cm
Product Code:   -


How was your Christmas? I hope you had a fabulous day with your family and friends, and were able to fully enjoy the festivities!

Now, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you will know that this is not my usual posting day. I usually post up each Saturday morning (at the moment it's Friday night), but I'm going to be a bit out of the ordinary this week and put up my weekly post now. I'm heading off camping with friends for New Year's and we're leaving bright and early tomorrow morning. Hence, the reason I'm posting now- there's no way I can get up early enough to write something and still be ready in time to leave! And there is likely to be little by way of phone reception or internet access where we're going...

For my last puzzle post of the year, I have decided to put up a picture of Puzzlebug's Colorful Boats On The Lake. I was hoping to get a puzzle I have of fireworks done in time to celebrate the new year, but wasn't able to complete it in time. Maybe next year! 

I decided to put this one up because we're going to be near a lake (while camping) and it still has a summer- type of vibe for our southern-hemisphere new year celebrations.  

I hope you have a safe and happy new year and look forward to the adventures and puzzling that 2018 will bring!! 

Return To Santa: Art By Tom Wood

Brand: SunsOut
Pieces: 750
Size: 68.58cm x 87.63cm
Product Code:   96004

Christmas feels weird this year. 

Maybe it's because it falls on a Monday and the lead up to the day is the weekend. I work in retail so I'm usually working up until Christmas Eve,  but because it's the weekend this year, I don't need to. That's thrown me out quite a bit but at the same time, I'm happy to have the time off to organise myself for Christmas! 

As promised last week, I have put up a Christmas-themed puzzle for today- a cute shaped puzzle that features the artwork of Tom Wood for SunsOut. This puzzle was much bigger than I anticipated- SunsOut usually label their puzzle dimensions in inches, and I have to then convert them to centimetres to work out just how large a puzzle it is! The pieces are also a variety of weird and unusual shapes, as is typical of the brand, so it can take some time to sort them and find the edge pieces. Sometimes pieces that can be found in the middle of the design have such straight edges, they could be mistaken for being part of the border! 

For this one, I worked in colours and textures blocks to work out what went where. The design is both cute and bright, so no problems there...I'm starting to become a bit of a fan of the randomness of SunsOut designs, although if I have one fault with the brand, it's that their boxes aren't very sturdy. I think every box I have of theirs is torn or ripped in some way because the cardboard box is so thin that it doesn't wear well if you stack a few boxes on top of one another. Nevertheless, the puzzles inside them are still good, and the designs are pretty so I'll probably continue buying and putting them together...

Have a safe and happy Christmas and I hope you get everything on your Christmas wishlist!

xo

Tin Robots

Brand: Ravensburger
Pieces: 1000
Size: 70cm x 50cm
Product Code:   81346

There's only 9 days left till Christmas, and while I'm tempted to put up a Christmas-themed puzzle, I think I might wait and leave it till next week.

Instead, I have decided to put up a picture of a puzzle called Tin Robots, by Ravensburger. I'm not sure why this puzzle image appealed so much to me, but when I saw it, I knew that I liked the old-school style of it, and I had to do it! 

I haven't really got much more to add to this post- as usual, the quality of the puzzle was as wonderful as expected for this brand. 

Now I'm going to sort out what Christmas shopping I have left to do... and work out which Christmas-themed puzzle to put up next week! 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Droids

Brand: Crown
Pieces: 1000
Size: 45.7cm x 60.9cm
Product Code:   017262

I have to admit that I can be a bit of a geek/nerd sometimes, and, over recent years, I have really grown to love the Star Wars franchise. In particular, I love The Force Awakens, the latest one in the saga (I don't really include Rogue One as part of the series, despite where it fits in, because it doesn't feel as though it's part of the saga, even though it is!) With The Force Awakens, we were introduced to BB-8, another lovable droid who works alongside C-3PO and R2-D2, and this puzzle is a wonderful tribute to the three of them.

I have decided to put this one up because the next installment of the Star Wars saga (The Last Jedi) will be released in cinemas this Thursday (December 14, 2017) and I can't wait! My husband and I have already booked tickets to see it at Village Cinemas Gold Class next Sunday- should be good! 

This puzzle took me a little longer to do than anticipated- mostly due to the similar shades of the background. There were so many browns, greys and blacks blended together that it was sometimes difficult to work out where each went, and the fact that the picture on the (collector's) tin was lighter in colour didn't really help matters! But I got there in the end (with the help of a lot of natural light) and the actual design turned out to be quite good. The quality of the pieces was alright too, which helped. 

I've done a few Star Wars puzzles now, all distributed by different companies, and I'm sure with the release of the next film, there will be plenty more designs to add to the collection...

Variety Of Colorful Ice Cream

Brand: Colorluxe
Pieces: 1500
Size: 58cm x 84cm
Product Code:   -

As I have mentioned previously in my posts, I live in the state of Victoria in Australia.

Over the last few days, we have experienced extremely hot weather (moving from spring into summer) with about 3-4 days in a row of of temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius. 
A few days ago, the Bureau of Meteorology issued an extreme weather warning for Melbourne and most of Victoria, saying that we were going to be hit with a storm that would deliver major floods and damage- the worst we've seen in over 20 years apparently! 
At time of writing, we are yet to see much evidence of it, but we've been told it's on its way, and if the scattered showers and radar images on the internet are to be believed, it's not too far off. 
Many events in the area have been cancelled already (Geelong's Carols by the Bay and the 2017 Food Truck Festival, sadly), so that's put a 'dampener' on the start of summer (see, what I did there? 'Dampener'? That's pun-tastic!)

Because I don't have any puzzles of storms or rainy scenes (wouldn't a lightning strike puzzle look incredible?), I have decided to post an image instead of a puzzle that was relevant a few days ago, when it was stinking hot. Who doesn't love a variety of ice cream flavours? The above puzzle celebrates all things ice cream, with many different flavours and colours in cups and cones. 
This puzzle took me longer to do than I expected. I thought it would be easy to work by colours for each ice cream flavour but there were actually a lot of similar colours, which made this task a bit more difficult. The backs of these puzzle pieces are coloured to make sorting easier, and I actually had to refer to this a few times to work out what went where! 
Besides that, the pieces fit well together and the image was quite pleasant to create.