Tuesday, June 26, 2018

White Mountain Puzzles: "Fourth of July"

"Fourth of July," White Mountain, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30

This one from White Mountain took me a day longer than I expected it would, and that's entirely due to the trees that make up almost one-third of the puzzle. I wish I knew why it was, but trees give me more trouble than anything else I've ever encountered in a puzzle. It just seems as if my eyes glaze over when I see all those leaves and partial branches...and fitting pieces becomes near-impossible. And that was exactly what happened again.


As you can see from the cover, this is a representation of a Fourth of July celebration in a park setting of at least sixty or seventy years ago. It's the American ideal, of course, and I enjoyed watching all the little scenarios come to life as I began to piece things together. 
(But be warned...take a close look at the puzzle cover and you will notice that the puzzle has been blurred beneath the title "Fourth of July." Those words do not exist on the completed puzzle itself, and anyone building this one will be on her own for that section of the puzzle.


This one works almost as if it's one of the White Mountain collages in that it's best just to start fitting the various characters together without worrying too much where or when they are going to attach to the overall puzzle image. Then when you have enough of them completed, they start fitting to the frame and you can take it from there by either continuing with the separate little images or working the puzzle from the bottom up. I decided to keep doing what had already gotten me to this point by taking every separate scenario as its own little puzzle and worry about attaching all of them later.


And eventually they all start coming together...leaving all those pieces of trees and branches sitting around to laugh at what is to come when I dare pick one of them up for the first time. That's when things came to a streaking halt.


Finally, I got the trees started, but only because I could place some around the crashed kite and the balloons that had escaped earth to head toward the sun and their eventual doom.


Eventually, the trees began to fill in, but it would be another three hours or so before I would finally finish that last big section in the center of the puzzle. If you had asked me about the difficulty of this one before I started on the trees, I would have told you that it was pretty easy. But now? I would tell you that it's a pretty good challenge, and a whole lot of fun.

4 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. It was a good one, Stacey...but those trees drove me nuts. There are over 200 pieces of tree parts, and I am terrible with those things.

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  2. We all have something that stumps us (pun intended) - but you persevered and did a great job on the trees! It really does look like a fun puzzle, I love the image. :)

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