Thoughts on my 2000-Piece Favorite Foods Puzzle

Remember this? 

It's the design I made for my 2000-piece custom puzzle by PuzzleYou, featuring all of my favorite foods. It makes me so happy looking at it. 

I've never done a 2000-piece puzzle before, and after accidentally creating a really difficult 1000-piece custom puzzle, I was really cautious designing this one. I don't enjoy solid-color or similarly-textured puzzles where you have to try every piece in every position, so I wanted my puzzle to have a lot of variety in color and texture. So how did it turn out? 

Awesome. 

(The poor color in this photo is due to bad light. The puzzle is more vibrant.)

It was difficult because 2000 is a lot of pieces, but it was never frustrating. I was always able to make progress. I started with the outer border, which was the easiest part by far. The next easiest were the red objects and the blue backgrounds. After that, the black borders were a lifesaver. 

I decided I could treat myself to whatever food I assembled first. At this point, I thought it was going to be the ice cream, donuts, or beet salad, but it ended up being the lemon souffle. (I haven't had one yet.) The most difficult ended up being the pizza, pasta, and the eggs benedict. The pizza was particularly vexing, as it was very easy to identify the pieces, but hard to properly connect them. 

I spent about two weeks on the puzzle, working on it in sessions ranging from 5 minutes to 2 hours. I loved every minute. The quality is superb and I'm very happy with the design. As I was working, it struck me how valuable puzzles are as a way to train your eye as an artist. What do I mean? When you look at one puzzle piece, you're seeing isolated colors and textures without the surrounding meaning. These colors and textures might not match what you expect them to be. 

Take a look at the four puzzle pieces across the top of this image. They are each part of a food or drink (as opposed to a plate or background) and are in the same orientation that they appear in the puzzle. Based on the colors and textures, can you guess what food each is? 

If you knew that the first one was a hamburger, I'm really impressed. For the longest time, I assumed it was part of a cocktail. Now that I know where it goes, it's obvious that it's tomato, onion, and cheese. 
 

The second one isn't a loaf of bread, nor a waffle. It's a donut. 

Surely this is a hamburger patty? Or bread? Nope. It's ice cream. 

For the longest time, I couldn't find the last piece for the cocktails. How hard could it be to find a red piece? Very hard, when I'd sorted it definitively with the rhubarb, where it did not belong. 

After doing this puzzle, I am confident that I would be able to draw or paint any of these foods better than before. There's no question that this puzzle helped train my eyes to see the actual color and textures, rather than the ones I might logically expect. Plus it's so much fun! I highly recommend a custom puzzle from PuzzleYou. My coupon code has expired, but even without it, you'll find the prices are very reasonable. Enjoy!

2000 Piece Custom Puzzle by PuzzleYou

I have a new puzzle and I'm sooo excited! This is my second custom puzzle from PuzzleYou. At 2000 pieces, it's twice as big as the one I made to celebrate visiting all 50 states. The beauty of a custom puzzle is that you can use literally any design you want. I went with a food theme this time, inspired by this scrapbook layout. 

I love the quality of PuzzleYou puzzles. The pieces are thick and sturdy and they interlock nicely. I'm so excited to dive in and get solving! In case you are wondering... no, there will be no attempts at speed puzzling this time. I'll be sticking to 500 piece puzzles for that. 

Here's a closer look at the image I used for this puzzle. I designed it very intentionally, in hopes of creating a beautiful puzzle with enough color and texture differentiation that it wouldn't be frustratingly difficult. Fingers crossed!

I made the whole thing with PicMonkey's stock photos and collage tool. I created a grid with 25 spaces and black lines separating each, then searched for images of my favorite foods. The foods include: chocolate mousse, pineapple, bread, eggs benedict, raspberry popsicle, rhubarb, pizza with white sauce, popcorn, caprese salad, pasta, a teriyaki rice bowl, waffles, fruity cocktails, chocolate chip cookies, conversation hearts, an ice cream cone (with chocolate chip, mint chip, and chocolate), potstickers, donuts, a cheeseburger, citrus sorbet, cheese fondue, beet salad, hot apple cider, lemon souffle, and cheese. Yum!

I placed the images randomly at first, then rearranged them so they were balanced. I maximized contrast between adjacent spaces. I placed like colors in visual triangles. I separated plates and bowls so that they were scattered evenly. Finally, I zoomed in on each image to minimize large areas of solid color. I loved designing this puzzle!

Custom puzzles make great gifts. Any puzzle fan would love to get a puzzle featuring their favorite photo, a special memory, or a collection of images of their favorite things. Go ahead and make one for yourself as well - you deserve it! The folks from PuzzleYou provided me with this puzzle AND a discount coupon for my readers. To get 15% off everything at PuzzleYou, use the code CindydeRosier15. Hurry though - it's only good until 12/17/2023. Enjoy!

deRosier US Tour Puzzle

Remember the custom puzzle I put out for our 50 State Party? It's a 1000-piece puzzle. Because it has a lot of text, I fully expected that we'd finish it, or at least get close, during the 4+ hour party. Nope! Not even close. Even with multiple people working on it, the puzzle was less than 10% done when the last guests left. It turns out that I accidentally designed a REALLY challenging puzzle. 

It took me a good two weeks putting in a few pieces here and there when I had time. To complete the solid black areas, I had to sort by shape and try them one by one until I got a fit. Not my favorite way to puzzle, but it was SO satisfying to finish.  

There are quite a few things I could have done to make the puzzle easier. Obviously, a lower piece count would do the trick. Instead of a solid black background, any kind of gradient (even a subtle grey one) would have made a huge difference. Adding a contrasting frame, alternating the colors of the rows of text, or simply putting dashes or dots between each state name, would result in an easier puzzle. But easy isn't always the goal. I got a lot of satisfaction out of completing this challenging puzzle. 

As I mentioned in the original post, this came from puzzleYOU. The quality is superb. I absolutely love the thick pieces. They feel great in my hand and interlock beautifully. I'm already thinking about my next puzzleYOU puzzle... I think it's going to be inspired by this!