Sometimes, everything happens for a reason.

So Mercedes and I got in a big fight last night. The stresses of island life; moving away from our friends and family, learning to communicate together, making new friends, heat, bugs, lack of services on island, our transportation situation  and not having AC in our house is making life difficult and fights more inevitable. 

So M decided to leave, to cool off and I decided to do soothing constructive. I don't like to puzzle when I am mad, because puzzling to me is something I do when I am happy and something M and I do together. Well, I made in exception last night. We have a puzzle that was crushed in a box during the move and it lost a few pieces. We decided to put it together and cut out a W for our last name in the completed puzzle (Hopefully hiding the missing piece) and put it on our front door.

So I started on the 750 piece puzzle by Julian Askins titled Lake Side View. I started as usual, sorting the edges and flipping pieces. Shortly after starting on the edges, a piece stuck to my arm and fell in a flowerpot under the table. I just barely caught the flash of white out of the corner of my eye, it might have otherwise gone unnoticed and unlooked for as the puzzle we know is missing pieces.

 The pot contains a dead stalk of a plant that we inherited when we moved in and is pining for the seeds we recently bought. I retrieved the piece, and I thought, "huh, thats a funny place for a piece to land". I also noticed there was a bit of a whole where a piece could fall in and end up under the dead plant. I picked up the plant just on the hope that our missing piece from the James Rizzi 5000 piece puzzle we just finished might be in there (I mean it seemed reasonable that if a piece from this puzzle could fall in there, why not from Rizzi?) and to my disbelief the piece sat starring back at me, freed from its dank tomb. 

I never really wanted to do this puzzle. The thought of spending hours on a puzzle only knowing you will be disappointed does not rank high on my list of things to do, but I needed to cool down and do something constructive and the end result of this was that we found our missing piece which started the healing process of our fight. I guess without the fight, we may have never found the piece, and the piece helped end our fight. 

Its seems appropriate that a puzzle brought us back together.

The missing piece

Effervesently Yours - A quick snack

While I was waiting for M so we could finish Rizzi yesterday, I fired up the Effervescently Yours puzzle (The one showing the Perrier bottle) that she picked up from the Thrift store. It is a springbox puzzle from 70s or 80s and it was a joy to put together! I was worried with all of the black pieces, but the Springbox cutting technique results in pieces with clear shape differentiation and I was able to assemble the entire puzzle without a mistake! I am glad to report that our perfect record at getting puzzles from thrift stores that have all the pieces has gone untarnished!

I really enjoy these Springbox puzzles and puzzles in general with the funky shapes that dont follow the grid patters of cutting. It makes for interesting puzzling! I just wish they would all go back to including a signature piece.

Without further delay: Effervescently Yours!

Effervescently Yours - 500pc, Springbok (Out of Print)
Thrift Store - Livonia, MI $2.00 2/12/2013
Started: 5/7/2013
Completed: 5/7/2013
Builders: Tom
Notes: Love the unique pieces and how tight they fit together. I picked up the puzzle by the edge and shook it to show  M how tight it was!!!

Rizzi Finished!

Today we finished up James Rizzi's Nothing is as Pretty as  a Rizzi City! We laid our puzzle piece tattoo piece in around 6pm today! So far, this is the largest puzzle we have completed together! It took us 19 days from start to finish.

We however, realized the fear that indeed, a piece was missing! We also learned that Ravensburger does not have a missing piece replacement program for puzzles 5000 pieces and under.

The Missing Piece... A very sad day!

I found a funny link while looking for techniques on how to make a puzzle piece, turns it took this guy 8 years to do a 5000 piece puzzle and he found he too was missing just one piece! I hope he gets it fixed!


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1278837/Jack-Harris-spends-7-years-doing-5-000-piece-jigsaw-finds-ONE-bit-missing.html


For now, I am going to try my hand at making a replacement piece... we will see how it goes, if it doesn't work out, then I will have to go to the doc! I am going to try and fix it using a printer, and wood epoxy like quick wood. I am going to first try and print the missing piece using a scanner and photoshop. Once I print the piece, I will place the surrounding pieces face down and lay in the new piece image, fill the whole with the epoxy, and then level it off with the surrounding pieces and let it dry. Wish me luck!

UDPATE: WE FOUND THE PIECE! Here is the completed puzzle!

Missing Pieces, Wine and other troubles.

This James Rizzi puzzle is giving us some trouble. We are 99% certain we are missing a piece ontop of spilling wine on about 25 of them... Our table puzzle is for all practical purposes, outside, so we have to go through a lot to keep it dry and organized which means shuffling between multiple tables and board to build such a large puzzle. Well, lets just hope we can get replacement pieces without issue....

The sidewalk and buildings are now complete... time to fill in the street! Maybe tonight!

-Thomas

Rizzi Progress Report

After taking a few days off for Ms bday, we hit Rizzi hard today and made some legit process. I would say we are one day away from completion. Our friend Ashley is visiting so it might not happen for a few days but surely we will be done within the week!

New Puzzle Piece Tattoo

Yesterday, for Mercedes' birthday, we got new matching tattoo pieces of an actual piece from the 5000 piece James Rizzi puzzle we are currently constructing!

We had a last minute change of piece and then a small addition to make it more personal to us. Check it out. Thank you so much Seth from Compass Rose Tattoo in St. Thomas! We could not be happier!

This is the piece we found. We had a different piece picked out but changed our minds the night before. We like this one because its for sure us, the puzzle couple.

M has her outline done, now its time to color it in!

M getting color

Our friend Laura stopped by the shop to see us getting some ink!

Mercedes went first, now its my turn!

Women are way better at pain than men. M says I had to wear my shades to hide the tears.... whatever, look how bright it is in there!

Thats mine!

Our pieces together at last!

We had to fix up the actual puzzle piece now! Cant wait to place this one! We will save it for last!

We took the night off from puzzling and went out with friends to celebrate her birthday properly. I am one lucky man! 

Here is a picture of the puzzle as we were working on it.

Happy Birthday Mercedes, The Glass of Wine, New Tattoos

Today is Mercedes birthday and to celebrate, we are getting new matching tattoos. Of what you ask? Well, a puzzle piece of course! But wait, it's not just any puzzle piece, its going to be our favorite piece from the James Rizzi Nothing is as pretty as a Rizzi City puzzle! Pretty kick ass huh!

In other news, after about 50,000 pieces, I had my first puzzle accident last night... I spilled a glass of wine and ruined about 25 pieces of the 5000 piece Rizzi puzzle we are getting tattooed today! I was so mad at myself, I know better than to have beverages on the puzzle table. M just said, thank god it was not me! I guess we are going to test the Ravensburger lost/broken piece replacement program.... so sad!

In other news, Mercedes mom bought her a puzzle for her bday! Its so colorful and we cant wait to show this one off!

We are getting this as matching Tattoos for M's 29th Birthday!!! It's a piece from James Rizzi's Nothing is as Pretty as a Rizzi City 5000pc puzzle by Ravensburger

Mercedes Mom got her Color Palette 1000pc from the Master Pieces Colorize series for her bday!