Double Trouble Jigsaw

My friend Jackie sent me a colourful balloon jigsaw. It is a mirror image jigsaw which I have never come across before.

I started to put the outside, straight, edges together. I realised that the rounded surface of the pieces was the right way up and the flat surface of the pieces was the underside. The image is on both sides of the pieces. As I got a section together and compared it to the picture on the box I realised that the right way up was the mirror image of the picture on the box.

I decided that my brain wasn’t able to cope with a mirror image and at this point I flipped over the edges that I had completed. The image was now the same as the picture on the box. I completed the edge and turned all the pieces to the flat side up on my tray.

This may be considered cheating but the box does say that it is two puzzles in one so I figured you could choose which one you want to do.

I like puzzles to have an image on the box to follow. I enjoy becoming familiar with the picture so that sometimes I can pick up a piece and I know where it will fit or I can look at a gap and find a piece of that colour and shape.

Once I had realised that I could follow the picture on the box by using the smooth pieces I found the puzzle really fun to do because it is so colourful. Because the puzzle is small and I found it addictive I started it one day and completed it the next.

I guess that once you have completed it like this you could then break it up and try it again using the mirror image. I don’t feel that I would enjoy completing the mirror imagine so I cheated and flipped the puzzle over. It holds together really well making it easy to flip over.

I actually liked the picture with the flat side up. It makes such a smooth jigsaw and the pieces fit together really nicely this way. It photographs better this way too.

At the moment my mum, Jackie and myself are sharing our jigsaws. This makes the jigsaws excellent value and helps us all during this time of lock-down so I will be posting this jigsaw on to my mum.

Mum can use this post as an explanation of how to choose which image to do. I know that my mum will prefer to do the jigsaw this way because we are very alike in the jigsaws that we like to do.