I make puzzles – I started with alcohol ink stained acrylic, and now focus on watercolor painted wood, with my company, 3 Cat Max. And part of being in a community is to volunteer when you can, so I am also a member of the Puzzle Parley Steering Committee (which, if you love wooden puzzles, and are available to travel to Massachusetts in July, you should go to the Puzzle Parley and have a blast!)
All that to say that when I saw the trophies that we were planning on buying for $80 a piece – just a thick piece of acrylic cut into a puzzle shape on a base – I had to make them much awesome-r. These are triple thick, with glass green acrylic and proofgrade cherry ply, and acrylic clips holding it all together. Not to mention the stands are also custom made from black pg acrylic to hold these puzzle trophies correctly. I’ll engrave the back clear acrylic to add the date and place, but thought it would be fun to share these before they get awarded in July!
Thank you! I had it left over from some of my other puzzle projects from last year, and it is so subtle that I think it is just cooler to get the glass green instead of clear all the time
Thank you!
I won’t be competing for Best in Show, because we will have the Guiness World Record jigsaw puzzle of 101,010 all handcut by Jill Walterbach in that competition I will be in the “Puzzlers’ ” pool though – is it weird to try to win the puzzle you made?
Oh, and they are actual puzzles that completely disassemble, as well as the two large pieces fitting together!
Thank you @MakerMatthew and @cynd11! I got to show them off to the Steering Committee over a Zoom meeting last night, and they were all quite happily impressed
It has been quite a journey – I remade their entire website and ticket registration process, learned API with Google App Script to automagically pull all of the registration information into a Google Sheets “database”, started a new trophy competition, managing the puzzle exchange and making a puzzle for it, and starting what I call “collector card” puzzles – mini puzzles to gift to our attendees made by all different makers – who I contacted to request their donations-as-ads, incidentally selling program ad space to them too It’s been a wild ride, and no wonder it only runs every 2 years!
The best part about attending is getting to play with all the gorgeous wooden and Victorian cut puzzles, and making new puzzle friends!
Well now that you’ve done all the hard part of getting the ticket registration and database stuff done, it should be easy to bump it up to a yearly event instead of every 2 years. Right?
I think we could flip between in-person and virtual each year, but the rest of the steering committee is not convinced… since we are right in the thick of it now, I might bring it up in September, when things have cooled down (literally and figuratively!). Who knows? They might take the bait then
Thank you! I did get that $80 that was earmarked for the standard trophies But I definitely consider what I would normally charge for custom puzzle making like this as a donation to the Puzzle Parley!
I will be in the “Puzzlers’ 
” pool though – is it weird to try to win the puzzle you made? 
