First Woody Finished!!!

This was an amazing pleasure to assemble! M did the bulk yesterday while I counted the 9000 piece monster. If you haven't done a woody, I highly suggest Liberty Puzzles! The intricacy is amazing and will open your eyes to the amazing possibilities.

In my opinion  Liberty is the finest expression of the art of puzzle making. They use state of the art technology that creates amazing cuts not possible with traditionally cut wooden puzzles. The beauty surpasses that of ordinary jigsaw cut wooden puzzles.

This reminds me a lot of CD's and Vinyl records. I dont own a CD but I do own a lot of records (Ok, I listen to the bulk of music streaming online). But CD's suck compared to vinyl, I guess we could argue this, but have you ever looked at a smal digital picture blown up and seen all the pixels? Well that is EXACTLY what CD's do to music. The CD was created like a million years ago and technology has gotten a lot better, (Imagine using a computer created around the time of CD's to look at high quality art....) Today, with Super Audio CD (I own a lot of these), Blueray etc, we finally have technology that surpasses vinyl and the same analogy can be made with laser cut wooden puzzles!

Get your woody on!

Tower of Babel, the irony and counting

I don't ever count a puzzle as in the closet until it is actually in the closet. Today, after a month, the Pieter Bruegel the Elder 's Tower of Babel (9000pc from Ravensburger) showed up today even though the tracking page says it is still in Germany... The irony is I have had  a tuff time communicating with the seller regarding this puzzle as I complained that it was seriously delayed. When I picked up the puzzle from the post office, I could HEAR pieces rattling around (not a good sound when you are expecting a sealed puzzle) and a piece literally fell out!

So close, but no cigar! I am hoping to get a refund because either the seller did not properly ship the puzzle (NOTE: If you are shipping an opened puzzle, make sure to put lose pieces in some sort of sealable bag, being in a box is not guarantee of safe delivery) or it was damaged in shipping/customs. Either way, its the sellers problem.

I am however, taking the time to count all the open pieces.... so far I have counted 1000.....

In other news, I picked up some amazing coffee mugs from the Britto Store in the Miami airport. Britto is certainly one of my favorite artists and we will soon be doing his 5000 pieces Garden puzzle! If you don't know who Britto is, take a look here!

While I am counting, M is busy putting the woody together. Want to play a fun game, count how many puzzles you can see in this picture!

Not a good sign when you open a box...

How to count 4560 pieces? Use stacks of 10. This makes it so you dont have to "count" each one, just make them the same size and you can double check your work. 3560 to go (hopefully)

M working on The Battle of Carnival and Lent while I count Tower of Babel...

WTF, who ships a puzzle like this.... so disappointed.

2000 counted... 

Our new Britto coffee mugs! Mine is the heart, cause I am sensitive  her's is the cat, cause if you rub her belly more than 3 times, she will bite your arm off

The Battle of Lent and Carnival - Peiter Bruegel the Elder

WOW!!!

I just got back from Seattle and spent some quality time doing little to nothing today and enjoyed fathers day! After making dinner, we settled into the most amazing puzzle we have had the pleasure to touch!

This laser cut puzzle from Liberty Puzzles is simply amazing! The pieces feel luxurious to assemble, the  shapes are fascinating and whimsical and the difficulty level is very high! M and I started on it tonight, here are some pics from the first few hours.

This painting was looted by the Nazis from the National Museum in Krakow, shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. It has been missing since. Bruegel painted several very similar versions of this painting, and the version you see here hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The scene depicts the annual three-day festival of Carnival, which precedes Lent. In this typical re-enactment, party-goers and revelers celebrate amidst beggars and cripples on the left side, and pious church goers display mercy and charity on the right. In the center, a fat man representing carnival rides a giant beer barrel to joust with the skinny Lent, dressed in mourning and sitting on an uncomfortable prayer stool.

I was very excited to find a piece that fits within a piece! This can only be done with a laser cutter and I wondered if they would attempt and it and sure enough, they did!

Amazing what you can do with lasers

You can stand wooden puzzle pieces up! M is working hard in the background

Here are all of the object pieces

Here's M and I in this puzzle :-)

Here is an example of one of the things that makes these puzzles difficult. You cannot just assemble the edge... look closely at the cuts

All of the corners are also split making it very hard to find them!

Carry on luggage

I'm flying home today with some pretty awesome carry on luggage. Next stop Orlando Florida - Miami - St Thomas.

The eagled eye readers my recognize these as the R. van der Weyden's "St. Columba Altarpiece" 18,000 piece from Educa and Bruegel the Elder's "The Battle of Carnival and Lent" 704 piece laser cut wooden puzzle from Liberty Puzzles. The woody is amazing, I will show be showing a lot more o this beautiful puzzle once I get home

This is one heavy ass carry on!

These pieces are so beautiful!

Now this is something you dont see every day!

I couldn't help myself, I had to start looking through the pieces on the plane.