In 2001 we introduced Barb as an apprentice crafter and WOWóshe caught on fast! We soon realized her special talent for conjuring up mystical silhouette pieces and elaborate irregular edge treatments. You will see more and more window treatments in our Traditional puzzles. Remember the cat puzzle Bag Ladies shown earlier in this blog? Yep! Barb had her hand in this too! She also created the artwork for two Stave Treasure puzzles-Treasuretrove and Palace Pranks.

“I have always loved drawing and being creative. Living in the country and being close to nature is a constant source of inspiration and creative renewal for me.

Designing edges and window treatments for puzzles has been a challenging and enjoyable outlet for the artist in me. Edge design has become a way for me to create a “story” with silhouettes that will reflect the theme and imagery in a puzzle. It’s fun to see how silhouette pieces can develop a new life and perspective in an edge design.

The actual process of design sometimes seems like putting a puzzle together, piece by piece. I’m not sure what the end result will be…I will see how the shapes evolve and work at fitting them together. Some pieces fit, some don’t, but eventually it all comes together to form a design that I hope will challenge and surprise the puzzler as much as it had challenged and surprised me!”

Artists she really likes: James Christensen and Scott Gustafson

Here are a few examples of Barb’s work:

What’s a ‘window treatment’, you ask? Look below at the upper part of this cat-themed puzzle. The boxes of negative spaces are the windows…. no puzzle pieces fit into these empty spaces, which totally confuse most puzzlers. They are looking for pieces which fit around the cat tails and can’t find them.

Take a look at the sculpt in the light brown paper bag. This also in negative space, the whisker pieces having been thrown away.  By the way, the title of this puzzle is "Bag Ladies". Also, ace digital artist Melody added the cat heads to the border…. nice touch, Mel!

Below Lisa and daughter Shyann work on assembling a Time Share puzzle which was returned totally taken apart.  YouuuuWhooooo to all Time Share customers…..  before returning a Time Share puzzle please disassemble it in large chunks. DO NOT take it totally apart.  When we receive the puzzle we reassemble it to make sure all the pieces are there before sending it to the next Time Share customer. In this case the puzzle was totally disassembled, so Lisa and Shyann teamed up to put it back together, getting a taste of our own medicine in the process.

The second photo shows Jennifer Lennox about to open her 20th Anniversary present at the party we gave for her last week. Jennifer is our production boss and oversees our nine cutters  helping them get the puzzles crafted in a timely manner. As you might be able to gather from the photo Jenn is one of our  "Live Wires"…. never a dull moment around her… always lots of fun!

Here’s a sample of a Steve Stinger, a puzzle crafted with unexpected twists and turns.  The customer has to specify they want a Steve Stinger so we know they are willing to put up with some of our diabolical experiments.  The below scene shows an amusement park and we added all that blue water to create the water slides on the right side of the puzzle.  The left edge is filled with double-whammy pieces, much more than we usually do…. after all, the customer asked us to sock-it-to-them….  and we were delighted to do just that…heh, heh!!!

Look closely at the yellow butterfly-shape below because it is actually cut into smaller pieces. We call this type of shape an enlarged silhouette.  What you see  is the upper right-hand corner of this puzzle with an elaborate irregular edge.  The shaped pieces have been pulled from the interior of this colorful puzzle.