Jen's Completed Puzzles
I do lots of puzzles. To date, I have completed 135 puzzles, totalling about
185,325 puzzle pieces. I own several unopened puzzles as well -- if
there's one thing I've learned, it's that not all puzzles are always
findable. I once passed on buying an 8,000 piece puzzle
(The Shootings of May Third,
by Goya) because I figured I could always buy it later, when I
had more money. I haven't seen it since.
Ro got me started on the 3D foam puzzles, although he primarily does those
and I primarily do the 2D puzzles. However, I am including a list
of the completed Puzz3D puzzles we have.
Most of my puzzles are "art puzzles", although I have several others which
were presents that aren't art-related -- they're usually the kind of puzzles
which other people think will be hard for me to do! Amazingly enough, one year
between my birthday and Christmas, I was given three of the photomosaic
puzzles -- none the same! Talk about lucky. However, while I like the
photomosaics, I'm really not interested in doing the puzzles which are just
supposed to be difficult -- I like the ones that have a nice picture on
them when they're done. I glue them together and hang them on the walls
of the apartment, and you just can't do that with those silly double-sided
puzzles.
My older puzzles are glued onto cardboard, because the glue I was using then
would go right through the puzzle and onto whatever the puzzle was sitting
on! After gluing one puzzle to a table, and prying it off, I just built
the puzzles onto large pieces of cardboard. Later, I found a glue which
is not nearly that thin, and just coats the front. This makes the puzzle
coherent enough to withstand the forces involved in flipping it over,
so I can glue the back. The puzzle absorbs a lot more glue through the back,
of course, and that is where most of the strength of the glue is used.
The glue used to be marketed under the PSI Puzzle Preserver label, from
St. Charles, IL. In September 1999, after finishing the Y2K puzzle, I
suddenly discovered that Game Keeper (since aquired by
Wizards of the Coast
didn't have this glue anymore. Neither
did anyone else I could find. Game Keeper also couldn't tell me who they
used to purchase it from, not a phone number or a name or an address.
*sigh*. One of the regional managers finally tracked some down -- or so
the message said when I got it; a case was waiting for me at the Cupertino
mall. Well, I picked it up, and the packaging had changed (no nice
pre-cut cardboard spreaders, waaaah), and the label was changed (it now
read Game Keeper puzzle glue), the price was 1/2 what it was, but as it
turned out, it was the same glue. Happy Day. Of course, it was
too good to be true. I went back to Game Keeper a couple weeks
ago (Jan. 2001), and found they'd changed their glue again, only this
time it's a very thin, very glue-your-puzzle-to-the-table, glue!
So, it was time to start hunting down an appropriate replacement glue.
My husband poked around the web and discovered
the web pages for the
Charles Wysocki gallery, which was selling puzzle glue from a company
named Shamrock. It turned out to be a repackaged version of the
original PSI glue!! Happy Jen.
I don't frame all the puzzles -- that would be way too expensive. However,
the big ones I do frame, because they just don't have enough internal support
to not bow out when nailed to the walls. I've done four large frames
already, and each time I learn a bit more about tension and compression
when dealing with thin, flexible cardboard. I don't cover them with glass,
because it looks much cooler without it. My backing material then
evolved from 1-foot wide strips of strategically placed plywood to
double foil-backed rigid 1/4" insulation panels. Apparently
these are extremely easy to find in Quebec; from the Bay Area (California)
I had to call about 9 roofing companies before I found one that had some
on a site which they were going to be returning to the manufacturer the
next day, because they didn't need as many as previously thought. At that,
it wasn't even the rigid insulation -- it was classified as "semi-rigid".
It seems to work all right, but it is a bit warped from flat. Hopefully
I will evenutally find the rigid type of these insulation panels.
The puzzle is attached to the panels by 3M spray-on adhesive, which smells
just like an aerosol rubber cement. A bit of advice: only do this on nice
days when you can open *all* the windows in your house.
My current framing technology uses the foam core again, but this time
I am using the 1/2" thick version -- not the wimpy, warpable 3/16"
type found everywhere easily. The puzzle is attached using strips
of double-sided sticky paper (that's the technical term, as far
as I know). Cutting the paper from the roll format into strips allows
more careful puzzle placement, since there's no drying time to
use for adjustment. I've used this on a 5,000 piece puzzle and it's
holding up quite nicely.
Suppliers
- Mike Beriault is
my main contact at
Jigsaw Jungle,
although their web site is fantastic enough to not actually
need to call up personally.
- Jigboxx is a new,
supplementary supplier of mine. While their art inventory is
not as large as Jigsaw Jungle's, they did have some puzzles
that I had not seen before anywhere else. Mostly, their
art puzzles are made by Nathan, a perfectly respectable
manufacturer.
- Game Keeper
still rates a mention, if only for past performance.
Hopefully, Wizards of the Coast
won't drop their inventory levels
any lower, and they'll start carrying the larger puzzles again.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Completed Puzzles
Alas, I do not remember the names of all of the puzzles, nor all of
the artists. However, here's a list (with related links) of the ones
I do know!
- Frank W. Benson
- Summer, 1909 (Fine Art, 500+ pieces)
- Jean Beraud
-
Jheronimus, Hieronymus, or Jerome Bosch:
-
Sandro Botticelli:
-
Jan Breughel/Breugel the Elder (see bottom of this link's page)
- The Elements - Fire, 5000 pieces.
- Blooming Flowers in Vase (Piatnik, 1000 pieces)
- Winter Landscape at Antwerp (Ravensburger, 1000 pieces)
-
Pieter Bruegel/Bruegal/Brueghel the Elder:
- K. Buehr
- Red-Headed Girl with Parasol (Fine Art, 500 pieces)
- Caillebotte
- Regentag/Rainy Day (Piatnik, 54 pieces)
- Paul Cezanne
- Still Life with Basket of Apples (html), c. 1895, 80 pieces.
- Castle of Medan (Piatnik, 1000 pieces)
- Still-Life with Fruits (Piatnik, 54 pieces)
- Die Bucht von Marseilles/The Bay of Marseilles (Piatnik, 54 pieces)
- Dali
- Apparition du Visage (Eurographics, 1000 pieces)
-
Galatea de las Esferas (Educa, 500 pieces)
- Leda Atomica (Educa, 1500 pieces)
- Metamorphosis of Narcissus (Ravensburger, 1500 pieces)
- Edgar Degas
- Two Dancers, c. 1880-2, 80 pieces.
- Marino Degano
- E. Delacroix
- A. Desportes
- Composition Florale (Nathan, 1000 pieces)
- Tomas Filsinger:
-
Jean-Honore Fragonard:
- Paul Gauguin:
- Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Shall We Be Married?), 1892.
(Educa, 1500 pieces)
- Victor Gabriel Gilbert:
- Charles Haigh-Wood:
- Frederick Childe Hassam
- The Goldfish Window, 1916
- V. Kandinsky
-
Gustav Klimt:
- August Knoop:
- Prudent Louis Leray:
- R. Liebenstraum:
- Love's Dream (Ravensburger, 1500 pieces)
- Rene Magritte:
- Peter Max
-
Michaelangelo:
- The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, (Educa, 8000 pieces)
- Claude Monet
- Japanese Bridge (Piatnik, 1000 pieces)
- Bridge at Argenteuil, (html) c. 1874, 80 pieces.
- Impression, Sunrise, (html) c. 1873 (Eurographics, 1000 pieces)
- Poppies, Near Argenteuil (jpg) c. 1873(Nathan, 500 pieces)
- The Magpie (jpg) c. 1868 (Nathan, 500 pieces)
- Cathedral of Rouen, Portal (Piatnik, 1000 pieces)
- Japanese Bridge (Piatnik, 1000 pieces - done again, because the original was given away)
- Im Garten des Kunstlers/The Artist's Garden (Piatnik, 54 pieces)
- Argenteuil (Piatnik, 54 pieces)
- Le jardin de Monet (Nuova Arti Grafiche Ricordi, 1500 pieces)
- Jean-Roger Morel
- L'Abri du Marin (Fisherman's Shelter, Nathan, 500 pieces)
- Hotel du Phare (Nathan, 1000 pieces)
- Maisons du golfe (Nathan, 1000 pieces)
- Sylvia Murray
- G. Panini
-
Maxfield Parrish:
- William Parrot:
- The Fair in the Champs Elysee
-
Pablo Picasso:
- Guernica(jpg)
- Woman Seated in Chair, 1941
-
Jackson Pollock:
- Alchemy, 1947
- Convergence
- Jean Claude Quilici
-
Raphael:
- The School of Athens, 3000 pieces.
- The Triumph of Reason, 3000 pieces.
- Triumph of Galatea (Ravensburger, 1000 pieces)
- Redoute
- Anemones (Nathan, 500 pieces)
-
Rembrandt:
-
Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
- Norman Rockwell:
- C. Puig Roda
- P. Rubens
- Dance of the Villagers (Educa, 1000 pieces)
- Seurat
- La Grande Jatte (Piatnik, 54 pieces)
- Sally J. Smith
- Toulouse-Lautrec
- At the Moulin Rouge, c. 1892, 80 pieces.
- J.F. Van Dael
- Vase de fleurs, raisins et peches (Nathan, 1500 pieces)
-
Vincent Van Gogh:
- Samann bei untergehender Sonne, 1888(html)
-
The Vase With 12 Sunflowers(jpg) (metallicized)
- Irises(jpg)
-
Starry Night(html)
- Starry Night, 80 pieces
- Noon: Rest From Work(jpg)
-
Village Streets and Stairs with Figures(jpg)
-
Cafe Terrace
- The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles
- The Wheat Field
- Stairway At Auvers, 1890
- Road with Cypress (Piatnik, 54pieces)
- Stairway at Auvers (Fine Art, 500 pieces -- done again because the original was given away)
- Sunflowers (Fine Art, 500 pieces -- done again because the original was given away)
- Church At Auvers, 1890 (Fine Art, 500 pieces).
- Flowering Peach Trees (Eurographics, 1000 pieces, landscape)
- Flowering Peach Trees (Nuova Arti Grafiche Ricordi, 1500 pieces, portrait)
- J. Van Haasteren
- Get Well Soon (Jumbo, 1000 pieces)
- Willem Van Haecht:
- Frank Lloyd Wright
- Saguaro Forms and Cactus Flowers (FLW Collection, 1000 pieces)
-
Johann Zoffany
- Gary Zuercher
- Aztec God (Fractal Design)
- Pea Pod (Fractal Design)
- Unknown -- pictures, etc.
- The Date.
- Angel Butterfly
- The Embarkation of Henry VIII at Dover, c. 1545
- Locations:
- Sedona, Cathedral Rocks
- Grand Canyon
- Death Valley, Zabriskie Point.
- Yosemite Valley topography map
- Chilean Mountain peak
- Jamaica map
- Yosemite from Glacier Point
- Yosemite Valley Cartoon Map by Jo Mora (1931)
- Bryce Canyon
- Zion National Park
- Taylor Creek, Lake Tahoe
- Photomosaics:
- Alien Encounter
-
Earth (twice, because the first puzzle was missing an edge
piece, and when I sent in for a replacement piece, Buffalo Games
instead sent me a whole new puzzle -- with a different die cut!)
-
Space Shuttle
Owned, but not Completed, Puzzles
- S. L'Allemand, Anniversary of the Military Order of Maria Theresa (Falcon, 5000 pieces)
- Jheronimus Bosch, Garden of Delight (Ravensburger, 5000 pieces)
- J. Bruegel The View (Nathan, 6000 pieces)
- J. Cresques, Mapamundi, 1375 (Educa, 4000 pieces)
- L. Giordano, Trionfo delgli Asburgo (Educa, 8000 pieces)
- Monet, Japanese Bridge (Eurographics, 2000 pieces)
- Pradilla, La rendicion de Granada (Educa, 8000 pieces)
- D. Velazquez, La Rendicion de Breda (jpg) c. 1635 (Educa, 6000 pieces)
While I was putting this together, I came across various museums'
web sites: