Looking for an amazing gift or keepsake? This DIY double-sided puzzle is it! With 90 pieces of 2 images, it’s a little difficult without being ridiculous! I very fondly remember doing puzzles with my grandparents on the kitchen table. We didn’t have a mat or anything to move it away from the kitchen table, so when one was in progress it meant it was stuck there until it was finished. That also meant that we got to eat in the living room off of a tray for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Normally eating in front of the TV was reserved for important football games and Saturday morning cartoons. And I remember thinking that was pretty cool because that meant television EVERY meal! And with everybody look at the boob tube, there was nobody staring me down during meals telling me I had to eat this or that! Huzzah! As an adult I loved puzzles UNTIL I got cats. Then it was just far too frustrating because cats WILL walk off with a piece. Or maybe, two. Or they might jump across the table and slide everything onto the floor. Or if you have an exceptionally catty feline she might just sit on the table swatting pieces onto the floor while staring you down with a look that says “I could not give one flip about this, I’m just bored.” when you know she’s LOVING knocking that business in the floor. And so it seemed kind of funny to me when I thought about it after the fact, that the moment I found out there was a cut file in Cricut Design Space my mind instantly went to, and got my hands ‘a movin’ to make a puzzle with, you guessed it, a cat on it :) As I put together my very first DIY puzzle I did notice one thing… being only 8″ square and just 90 pieces it was a really quick little puzzle to put together. And that’s all good and well but sometimes you want a bit more of a challenge. I looked around and didn’t find a larger puzzle cut file and I wasn’t feeling drawing up my own in Illustrator, so I decided to get a little bit creative to make a puzzle the same size and the same number of pieces but with a higher level of difficulty. My first thought was to go with a more detailed image. I went through a lot of photos of my trip to Puerto Rico because, just like kitty cats, it’s something I truly love. But as I pulled images over I found that I couldn’t crop them into the square shape like my cut file in any way that I was happy with. So that eliminated that possibility (at least for me at this time) to make a more difficult puzzle with the same cut file. After some time I decided to just make a puzzle with one of my favorite pictures of my girl Marla. See her up there? She’s really a gorgeous cat. Her body may be everyday grey tabby but she’s itty bitty. Like, people are always amazed at her size. And she’s got these BIG and totally gorgeous eyes that look green in some lights and aqua in others. And she is just about the sweetest darn thing. I truly love this little gal so much and making a puzzle of her was like a no-brainer (even if this WAS the SECOND Marla puzzle I made this week). But I was still a bit plagued by the fact that it was just a little too easy to be enjoyable. But, boy howdy did I fix that! While I was tackling some PC cleanup I again saw the photo of my lovely little Carly the Boshih (50% Boston Terrier, 50% Shih Tzu, 100% sass) and I thought, I’d like a puzzle of that image, too. And then, BAM! It hit me just like that super old commercial with the country-dressed guy and gal who bump into each other “Hey, you got peanut butter on my chocolate!” “Hey, you got chocolate in my peanut butter.” and then they both go “delicious!” Yup, I had Peanut Butter cup epiphany… I could have one image on one side of the puzzle and another image on the other side of the puzzle and that would make it more difficult because you have to figure out which side goes with the picture you’re working on. Awesome, right? Now I went with 2 fairly simple images on both sides and I’d like to think I’m not a total ding-dong, but it took me a decent amount of time to put my puzzle together. It was a pleasant kind of difficult and making the images have 2 different backgrounds made things a bit easier. But if I decide to up the skill-level again, I’d probably go with 2 images with similar colors in them. OMG would that be hard, or what? But fun, right? In the last few weeks I’ve used a bunch of glues and tried out a bunch of different techniques for a DIY puzzle and today I’m going to share with you my favorites. What do you say? Let’s get after it? Today I’m finally going to show you how to make a double-sided puzzle that’s not super easy nor crazy hard. For this project you will need: Cricut Maker Cricut Design Space Cut File Cricut 2mm Chipboard Cricut StrongGrip Mat Cricut brayer Cricut Knife Blade + Housing Painter’s Tape (blue masking tape) Photo Paper <–I like this soft-gloss the best Printer (I am in LOVE with my HP Envy 4520) Mod Podge & a small brush While I do offer hand cutting alternatives when available for my projects, this is not one of those times. This project absolutely requires a fancy cutting machine and if you don’t have one, but are in the market I love my Cricut Maker best. I’ve had both Silhouette and Cricut and, hands […]
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