Puzzling over Products (Part 1)
I opened a store on my website this year. You can get original art, prints, and postcards. And I’m thinking of adding Greeting Cards. Maybe.
I want to leverage my artwork to sell it in ways that help to solve problems people have.
My nieces may have just helped me out. One suggested I make my kids artwork into puzzles. Several more chimed in.
I did a little research and ordered some sample puzzles just to see the quality. Here’s my journey.
Today, two puzzles arrived from Canvas Champs
I spent about $50 for the two of them including shipping. Not a lot of margin. But you have to start somewhere and I wanted to see the quality. From the looks of it, they traveled all the way from India. The FedEX guy knocked on our door and took my name to satisfy the “sign here” protocol but he didn’t want my signature. (Covid).
I got two types. One for kids and another for adults. Both puzzles are 11x14 inches..
The kid one has really big chunky puzzles pieces. They are hard plastic. They look indestructible. A kid can chew and chew and they will probably break a tooth before they break the puzzle piece. They are also pretty big pieces. The minimum size of each is larger than 2x3 inches. The printing of them is fuzzy however. It might be the image I sent them. The original I scanned is smaller than the finished puzzle, which means I need to rescan it in a higher dpi so it can be enlarged without becoming blurry. My angel husband tells me I did not make a $50 mistake. I invested it in my learning process. So far, I figure in the month of Oct, I have spent $150 investing in my learning process. I hope it is tax deductible.
Canvas Champs sent me this canvas print of the puzzle with the shape of the puzzle pieces printed on top. But it looks like they didn’t cut the puzzle to match the print. Ooops.
The one for the adults has a lot of really little pieces. Definitely not for little kids. Caution!!! choking hazard. There are 529 pieces in this puzzle. The printed canvas so far looks like they printed the pieces to match the puzzle on this one. Which is going to please my autistic son. And it will help me too because I’m still on the gathering of the edge pieces stage and I’ve spent twice as long on this puzzle than I did on the kid puzzle. (Granted it only takes 5 minutes to do a kid puzzle especially if you were the one who painted it in the first place.)
What I like about the adult puzzle is it is really hard. The picture has lots of variations of the same or similar blue. It is kind of fun to put a puzzle together of a painting that you did. I had flash backs of: “oh, that’s got to be where he is standing because I went a little more green in that blue there” moments. You know?
I don’t think they will be my final supplier, however, because they came in a plastic storage bin. (But I’m still thinking on that.) And a piece of the face of one of the aliens chipped off and left a white spot behind and no kids have played with this puzzle yet. Only this mid century Mama.
This puzzle has been sitting on a table in our living room for a week now. We almost have all the easy pieces done. I’m really grateful that this supplier printed red lines on a mat for us to follow. I think it might be impossible otherwise. If you like a good challenge and would like to order a more difficult puzzle, let me know. If I have enough interest, I will put this in my shop.
Check out Part 2 to see the second supplier that I found for puzzles.