Jigsaw Puzzles

Here is a selection of my jigsaw puzzle designs. With each puzzle, I challenge myself to try a new technique.

Click an image to enlarge

Space Shuttle Puzzle

This puzzle is made up of three different veneered plywoods. Cherry for the fuel tank, basswood for the boosters, and maple for the orbiter.

The orbiter can be stacked onto the fuel tank and boosters using alignment pins.

Look for the hidden shape within the puzzle and all of the special pieces.

Highland Coo Puzzle

This puzzle is one of my most difficult to date and is inspired by our trip to Scotland. It is made of cherry veneered plywood. I etched a hair pattern following the contours of a photograph of the Quiraing to create an abstract landscape on the puzzle.

There are several special pieces hidden in this puzzle as well.

Saturn V Puzzle

This puzzle is built so that it can break into stages, just like the real rocket could. It is made of basswood plywood and is made to scale with the space shuttle puzzle.

There are several special pieces hidden in this puzzle as well.

Star Trek Badge Puzzle

I made this puzzle as a birthday present for my dad out of cherry veneered plywood and basswood plywood.

Look for all of the hidden Star Trek ships. The Borg Cube is my favorite.

Turtle Stacking Puzzle

This puzzle was an experiment in whether I could make a multilayer jigsaw puzzle that both resulted in a recognizable 3D shape and that showed a new picture when completed. The puzzle consists of 9 individual puzzles with images of different planets (yes Pluto is a dwarf planet but I wanted to include it). Each planet image has a small amount of an image of Earth on the outer edge. When stacked from largest to smallest, those slivers of an image on each layer combine to reveal a large picture of Earth when viewed from the top.

Photo Puzzles

I have a created a wide variety of photo puzzles. They make great gifts and it is fun to hide customized pieces in the puzzles that have personalized meanings or that are related to the photograph I use. These puzzles consist of photo paper glued to an mdf backing.

Poodle Puzzle

A gift for my mom, this puzzle was created from a photo of her dog. I experimented with using different colors of acrylic instead of wood to create this challenging puzzle.

Food Chain Puzzle

One of my earliest puzzles, this was an experiment in creating puzzles within puzzles. Based off of images of animals I had taken, the puzzle consists of a butterfly within a frog within a heron. This puzzle taught me the importance of adding etching throughout a puzzle and the need to keep pieces at about the same size to limit frustration.