Veil (Forgotten by Cris Ortega)

Brand: Heye Puzzle

Pieces: 1000
Size: 50cm x 70cm

Product Code: Art.-Nr. 29460

Do you have a stack of puzzle mail that has arrived lately? 

I do. 

So so much...

I've mentioned this before and I know I sound like a broken record but my ability to buy puzzles and store them to do later is far outdoing my ability to actually get any puzzles completed! I have sooo many puzzles to do, and more and more keep arriving (my fault I know- I need to stop buying them!)

A few days ago, I won an Instagram competition and my puzzle prize was sent to me, so that's another one again! Granted, it's an amazing design and I think I'm going to start it today, but it's still enabling my problem. 

I decided to put this puzzle up today because I did it such a long time ago and it deserves it's spot in the limelight. The design is beautiful but it was quite challenging to do at the time because of all the like-coloured background pieces. Once completed though... whoah! I love gothic girl designs- they're always so appealing (even though they can sometimes be challenging). The artwork is always amazing, and in the case of this one, I was really happy with the overall puzzle quality. 

Favole series by Victoria Francés

Brand: Heye Puzzles
Pieces: 75
Size: 10.5cm x 29.7cm
Product Code:  Tree (29368), Portrait (29365), Curly (29363), Snowflake (29366), Shoulder (29364), Leaves (29367)

Until recently in Australia, the Halloween holidays were not a big deal. 

It was considered more of an international event, celebrated in America and some European countries. 

But over the last few years, more and more Australian retail stores have begun to seize the day- selling costumes, house decorations and other Halloween-themed paraphernalia. 

To embrace this theme, I decided to scour my collection to find a suitably spooky puzzle to do, but it turns out that my collection doesn't really extend to ghosts, witches and vampires at this point! 

Instead, I found these six mini vertical puzzles from Heye, which feature the gothic illustrations of Victoria Francés. Taken from her Favole collection, the women in these pictures are all gorgeously supernatural-looking, which I think lends to the spooky Halloween theme perfectly.

Curly

Leaves

Portrait

Shoulder

Snowflake

Tree

Each puzzle has 75 pieces, which means that they're relatively quick to do. While many of the colours are similar, it is easy enough to work out where each piece goes, and as I mentioned before, the illustrations are quite pretty, if not a little eerie. Victoria Francés, a Spanish artist, specializes in gothic romance illustrations, and these puzzles certainly fit the bill.