Playful Pandas

Brand: Cardinal
Pieces: 500
Size: 35.5cm x 27.9cm
Product Code: -

It's quite rare that I don't post this blog (and Instagram) on a Saturday morning, but sometimes circumstances call for a change. Tonight my husband and I are going to be attending the Evanescence concert in Melbourne (one of my favourite bands from my teenage years), and we'll be staying in the city overnight so I won't have any opportunity to post tomorrow morning. We'll also be staying in Melbourne until late tomorrow night- we wanted to experience 'White Night'- therefore my next opportunity would have been Sunday morning and that just feels too late! 

So I'm getting in a day early!

I have decided to post the above puzzle for two reasons- one, we'll be spending time at Melbourne Zoo on Saturday and I love to visit the pandas! And two, even though it's the Year Of The Dog for Chinese New Year, I didn't have any puzzles of dogs to put up so I figured I'd put up one of a distinctly Chinese animal instead! 

The above puzzle was quite easy to do, although some parts of the dragon (above the pandas) were a little bit challenging. The pandas themselves weren't too bad because the shading of their fur made it easier to differentiate each part and determine which panda was which. 

Funnily enough, when I finished this puzzle, there were two pieces left over, with nowhere left to put them! Usually with these cheaper brands, you find yourself missing pieces, so I suppose that was a pleasant surprise, even if I couldn't do anything with them. Maybe there's another Playful Pandas puzzle out there somewhere that's missing two pieces?! Oh well, at least it wasn't mine!

Kindred Spirits

Brand: Holdson
Pieces: 1000
Size: 49.3cm x 68.8cm
Product Code:  09492

Yesterday was St Patrick's Day- the cultural day of celebration for Ireland's foremost patron saint. 

For some, it is a day like any other, but for others, the celebrations can take on a wild turn. For guests at many Irish establishments, the day was decked out in greenery, Guinness beer, atrocious accents and Irish jigs. For those who had an interest in the day but weren't keen to go overboard,it was enough to wear a dash of green and listen to a tune from a more contemporary Irish band (U2 or The Script, anyone?)

As far as I'm aware, I have no Irish blood within my family, but I was still keen to commemorate the day of the Irish, so I tried to find a puzzle that would be relevant to the day. 
This was harder than I expected. As such, the above puzzle was the best that I could find, and only because there were so many shades of green in it!

This one was a little bit harder than I expected. As I mentioned just before, there were so many shades of green that initially, it was difficult to determine which piece went where. After a while, my eyes adjusted to the different shades and sorting was easier. In fact, it ended up harder to piece together the tree in the end than the green background behind it! 

This was a beautiful puzzle to do. The final image is gorgeous and the detail is magnificent. This puzzle is perfect for dragon aficionados, fantasy lovers and fans of Anne Stokes' artwork.

The Dragon And The Phoenix- A Good Omen

Brand: Pintoo
Pieces: 160
Size: 11x11x27.4cm
Product Code: S1002

This is the first time I have ever attempted to do a 3D puzzle vase, despite having seen a few at my local puzzle store. 

The vibrant colours and design were quite appealing, and I couldn't help but buy it! I have taken photos of the various sides of the vase (as it has different images all the way around) so that you can see exactly what it looks like. 

Assembly-wise, the vase was quite easy to do- the back of each piece was numbered and had an arrow to indicate where each piece went next. The pieces are also made of a firm plastic, so there's no danger of accidentally snapping them. Each puzzle box comes with the black stand (for displaying purposes), a coloured base, a coloured rim (for the top of the vase to give it a neat finish) and a little container that is placed inside the base of the puzzle (for holding water if you want to actually use the finished piece as a vase). 

This is a cute and practical puzzle, and something a little bit different if you want a change from the standard 2D jigsaw puzzle.