So recently I was talking with my therapist and she asked me what I do for fun. I couldn’t really come up with anything besides reading and watching YouTube that I do now, and I was having trouble thinking of anything I would want to pursue. I used to be into rubber stamping and card making but haven’t done that in a few years and recently got rid of all my supplies.
Later that day, I decided to look up some hobby ideas to see if I could get any inspiration. There were two that interested me from the list I found – jigsaw puzzles and yoga. I decided puzzles would be super easy to start doing, so I went on Amazon and found a puzzle that looked like it would be fun. It arrived on Saturday and I spent some time Saturday and Sunday (today) putting it together.
In between choosing this hobby and my first puzzle arriving, I started watching a new-to-me YouTube channel called Karen Puzzles. The creator films herself talking about puzzles and doing all kinds of different puzzles. She’s currently in the middle of putting together a 24,000 piece puzzle! I have been enjoying her videos, but I decided to start with a 500 piece puzzle myself. 🙂
The puzzle I got was Rare & Beautiful by Puzzle Crush. It has illustrations of flowers and butterflies with the words “How Rare & Beautiful You are” in a lovely handwritten font. I thought the letters would be the easiest part to put together, but they actually turned out to be the hardest part of the whole puzzle! The background is kind of dark, but I didn’t have a problem seeing the images and putting together the different sections.
The quality was pretty good, with a couple of issues. Five of the edge pieces had lifted off the cardboard backing, and the backing also started to life off a couple of times that I had to separate pieces that didn’t fit together where I thought they did. Here was my progress after spending a couple of hours on it Saturday afternoon:
I finished it up Sunday afternoon (the same day I am posting this). The rest of the flowers and butterflies went pretty fast, but the lettering was painstaking. I had to use the trick I learned from Karen Puzzles of sorting the pieces by shape and just try each one in a spot until I found the one that went in. Here’s the finished puzzle:
Overall, it was a good first experience. I have a little more idea now what to look for in choosing a puzzle and have already picked out my next one from Amazon. I’ll be sure to post it here when I do it.
What hobbies are you into? Do you enjoy jigsaw puzzles?
In So Many Words 