(Gifted) When I think of Christmas it's not images of Christmas Day that come to mind, but the whole festive season. I think of the long dark evenings where we are all at home as a family and spending time together. Wrapped up warm in blankets and watching films, playing board games and relaxing over a jigsaw. It’s the perfect time of year for traditions and one of the things I love about having a young family is we can start traditions now that my children will carry through into their adulthood. 

No one can resist helping when I get a jigsaw out

Starting A New Christmas Tradition

Jigsaws are popular in our house and we have lots for the children, but it was only a few years ago that I remembered the pleasure of them myself.  I love how soothing it is sorting through the pieces, grouping colours, finding the matches and slowly building a picture. It is calming and rewarding, but also surprisingly enticing for others. If I get a jigsaw out my family seem unable to stay away. Within minutes everyone is cuddled round and working together to complete the jigsaw.

Buying a new jigsaw or two for the Christmas season is a lovely way to bring the family together and the Christmas Jigsaw Puzzles from Wentworth Puzzles are perfect for this. There are designs from modern, to arty, cute animals to more traditional landscapes or religious scenes. While they aren’t designed for children, and they are more complicated than a standard jigsaw you can buy, the challenge of completing them make them perfect for encouraging people to come together. 

The penguin whimsy pieces in 250 piece Soulmates design

Why Choose A Wentworth Puzzles Jigsaw?

It’s not just the beautiful designs that I love Wentworth puzzles for. I love:

• The thick wooden pieces which make them so much more satisfying to piece together than thin cardboard. They are currently moving from 3mm to 4mm thickness so you might get either size in your puzzle, both are lovely to work with. 
• The printing is clear, bright and durable.
• They are surprisingly challenging which makes them more rewarding. The challenge comes from the irregular shaped pieces: you are unlikely to be able to find the corners and all of the edge pieces just by looking at them. This means that a 250 piece puzzle from Wentworth is considerably harder than a standard 250 piece jigsaw.
• The whimsy pieces are adorable. In with all the strange shapes you will find a number of pieces that are recognisable. As well as the Wentworth Puzzles tree logo design you’ll find a variety of shapes to match the puzzle so in our penguin one we had lots of penguin shapes and snowflakes. In the Santa’s Workshop shapes include stockings, a Father Christmas hat and a fireplace.
• Fresh out of the box the pieces conjure up the smell of a winter fire. The wooden pieces are cut using a laser which leaves behind a slight burnt wood smell. This does fade, but for the Christmas selection it’s the most perfect smell and I love it.
• The pieces are amazing quality and with care they will last for years. These are jigsaw puzzles that you will want to pass down through the generations.

Close up of whimsy pieces in the Soulmates puzzle

The whimsy pieces in the 250 piece Santa's Workshop jigsaw from Wentworth Wooden Puzzles

Wentworth Puzzles aren’t designed for children (although my daughters really enjoy the cracker size ones), but you will still find children come over to help out when you get a puzzle out. Gradually they will be able to do more and more on their own and they will love to get the designs out year after year. It took us just over an hour to work together on the 250 piece design so if you want one you can spend a whole afternoon on or to gradually complete a puzzle over a number of days you might want to try a 500 or 1000 piece design (if you have the space).

The puzzle designs we were sent and which feature in this post are Santa’s Workshop by Cobble Hill Image Collection and Soulmates by David Penfound. Both are the 250 piece versions. The puzzles come in a cardboard box without shrink wrapping and the pieces are contained in a purple drawstring fabric bag.

You can see the details of the whimsy pieces more clearly on the back

Tips For Completing A Wentworth Puzzle Jigsaw

Most people like to start jigsaws with the corners and edge pieces, but this doesn’t work so well on a Wentworth Puzzle. You can of course find all the flat edges if you want, but some of the flat edges won’t be the edge of the puzzle and some of the edge pieces will have barely recognisable flat sides. So I tend to adapt my approach depending on the jigsaw image.

With the Soulmates puzzle there are large areas of particular colours eg the ice, the sky and the penguins so I separated these out into piles. Then I then worked around the whimsy pieces. The strange shape of the snowflakes and penguins mean the pieces they connect to are particularly unusually shaped and easier to spot. 

The Santa’s Workshop puzzle was a little different, because there is so much going on it was easier to try to match what was on the pieces to the picture on the box. There are still large areas of background colour: the floor, walls, windows and red patches, but every piece has some form of context which allows you to work out the rough location and the orientation. Personally I found this easier to do. For a more challenging design where you have to look more at the shapes check out the new designs like San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice in Snow; Winter in Hallstatt, Austria; Chocolate Spa, and The Jumper.  

Thank you to Wentworth Wooden Puzzles for gifting these gorgeous jigsaws. They were a pleasure to do as always.

Check out some of the new Spring designs and mini puzzles in my Easter Gift Guide.