I bought this jigsaw puzzle as a souvenir for myself when I visited Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany back in 2018. 🏰
I remembered the castle's souvenir shop sells the same puzzle with other backgrounds too e.g. winter and summer. But I bought the autumn version because I wanted to remember I visited this beautiful place in autumn. 🍁🍂
But life got busy after that, I almost forgot that I bought this. Until a recent weekend, I finally had the time and space to do it.
Took out the dusty box under my bed.
I then took a piece of unused cardboard and cut it into a few pieces to make it as a barrier in the puzzle box. This is to segregate the puzzle pieces into different sections according to their colours/themes so that it's easier for my brain to sort out which area to tackle first.
e.g. The sky, the dark green forest, lighter green forest, the autumn leaves, the castle, the mountain etc.
People say the foundation step is always the most important upon building anything. I guess this step is the foundation for me then. It actually took me a few hours to finish segregating all the pieces, cause many looked similar to each other. My brain was half exhausted after this step haha. 😂
The outcome from the 1st day.
Few things I learned along the process:
- It's okay to get stuck.
- You can move on to try other things first.
- You don't have to solve it all there and then.
There are times when I am stuck at a certain part e.g. the autumn leaves area, I desperately want to find the right piece to fit the empty spot.
"Where? Where? Where is that piece?" While looking around anxiously and getting stressed up.
After struggling for a period of time, I finally gave up and told myself, "It's okay, let's just move on to other areas first."
When I slowly got my momentum to further expand other new areas, then the earlier missing piece will suddenly appear from nowhere. Haha! 😂
Tada! I so love what I'm seeing. The joy of completing something from scratch.❤️
Surprisingly, it was quite therapeutic too! I enjoyed myself a lot. It's my first time solving a 500 pieces jigsaw puzzle and it took me 2 days to complete it.
I was curious as to why solving a jigsaw puzzle can be this therapeutic. Then I googled and realised it actually does wonders to our brain and soul. It helps to:
- Relieve stress
- Increase in production of Dopamine each time we put a piece in the right place, hence making you feel good and improving the mood.
- Improve problem-solving skills as it engages both the left (logical) and right sides (creative and intuitive) of the brain.
- Improve attention span as we need to focus our mind on one image for a long period of time, without extraneous thoughts entering our mind.
And many more others!
No wonder! What a great discovery for me. I was actually finding something that's meaningful for my brain and soul to do, and I'm glad that I found one.
Not sure if the jigsaw puzzle works for everyone, maybe you can try it and let me know too 😉.
We have a public puzzle table in our library, usually with a 500- or 1000-piece puzzle. Sometimes a gaggle of teens surround it, chattering away as they try to assemble one section or another. At other times, a lone adult will linger for much longer than they intended for a brief library visit.
Cool, didnt know you can have that in libraries. We rarely have it over here. Must be fun to assemble puzzle together 😄. Thanks for sharing your experience :)
Here in the UK , jigsaws had a boom during lockdown, when everybody seemed to do them. I loved them as a kid, but had not done one for years.
Yes we can multitask and then it all comes together:)
Cool! I have not tried solving a puzzle with a group of people, maybe by then I'll be able to multitask 😄. Thanks for sharing your experience!
hehe yes you can two jigsaws at the same time then!
I love jigsaws, they are so relaxing to spend time doing. I see from the first pic you're not a "do the border first" puzzler, Me either, though I'm not as organised as you putting similar coloured pieces into sections. I generally pick out a central feature and start ther looking for the right coloured pieces, generally doing the border last. May take longer, but i enjoy it that much more. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing your method too! I believe everyone thinks and behaves differently. So I guess it doesn't matter which method we use, as long the puzzle is done at the end of the day. 😄
This is really cool, I used toake loads of jigsaw puzzles, I absolutely loved it as a kid. Haven't made one in years.
I didn't know those facts you stated as to why it's therapeutic, but they all make sense.
Well done on how quickly you got it done, seems like a great activity for a weekend.
Yup, it does! Maybe you can try this therapeutic activity soon too!
Thanks for sharing your experience @andrastia. 😊
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