When you finish a multi-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, do you like to preserve it in some way (i.e. puzzle glue and frame) or do you break it up and put it back in the box? Why?
I have almost finished a two thousand-piece puzzle and a part of me doesn't want to take it back apart after all that work. What would you suggest/have you done in the past?
Answers ( 2 )
I do not preserve the puzzle. I would not normally preserve the puzzle. I have seen many, many preserved puzzles, and they, with nearly no exceptions, look like a puzzle-thumbtacked--to-the-wall.
The exceptions have been beautiful artwork which was made into a high-quality puzzle, which was assembled, glued together, then framed behind glass with spacers to provide depth to the packaging- nearly a shadow-box. One was a macro of a bee-butt in a rose (only about 8" x 12") and the other a marvelous photo of a handmade quilt- a Boho-type pattern with circles inside squares, just a delicious piece of art, in itself. This puzzle was quite large- your many thousands of pieces I would guess- and its framing likely costs many hundreds, at least.
I understand wanting to preserve the accomplishment, though, so, if you decide to go that route, my advice is to make the display of your accomplishment fit its value as an accomplishment. If you won an Olympic medal, would you drape it over a lampshade for display? Nope. Same here.
Consider investing more than glue and thumbtacks into your sense of pride at what you have done.
One of the primary appeals of jigsaw puzzles is the repeatability of the assembly. Because the process of assembly is about the search for commonalities - edge pieces, color similarities, pattern recognition - and this search is in itself a pleasant activity, the fact that one is assembling the same puzzle again is no detriment to the enjoyment of the experience. Especially if you allow a certain amount of time to pass between repetitions. That gap seems to vary from person to person, but for most people if you do a puzzle once a year or so, you'll have forgotten enough about it that you'll still enjoy assembling it again.
In that sense, the question you ask is slightly akin to asking "after you finish reading a thousand-plus page book, do you turn it into a monument to your accomplishment?" Mostly, no, though there is an argument to be made that personal libraries of hardback books that are never re-read are in fact this exact thing. For people who enjoy doing reading for pleasure, the book is a re-usable resource, a familiar friend to return to every so often. The same way with people who like puzzles! Sure, every once in a while there might be a particularly artistic or pretty one that could be turned into some kind of art, as J suggests above, but by and large, that's not what puzzles are for.