Jane and I have a Holiday tradition of making our own puzzle.
We put together a puzzle, usually a 1000 piece puzzle. When we're done we flip it over to make our own puzzle. We draw on the back side with felt tip pens and markers (Sharpie 24 color pack).
We work on it with our friends when they come to visit. We pick a theme like flying things, or boats on the water. We did one of an Alien city on the moon with space craft in the sky. Then as we sit around and think of things to draw, usually funny things. I do the drawing most of the time, but I encourage others to draw too.
Sometimes I just draw in pencil and someone else inks it and colors it. People also help by coloring. Everybody contributes in some way.
This year I took control. In the past, just adding random things here and there made the final piece look unorganized. We picked an Egyptian theme, from a video game we played called Sphinx on the PS2. Jane had the idea of a temple in the desert with the Anubis caricature and the Sphinx caricature running away. I laid out the scene with 2 point perspective to make the temple look dimensional. Then I started drawing everything in pencil. People gave me suggestions and I drew them in. There are things we always draw in the puzzle. A flying saucer, an alien, Sputnik, and a flying heart. This must have started from that space puzzle we did. I had most of the elements penciled in and I was ready to ink. I used one thin marker to ink everything. That's what bugged me about past puzzles, the different line thicknesses. Once I had everything inked in, I gave it all over to Jane and our friends to color. They used some cool markers, we have metallic and sparkle colors. It was a fun puzzle. It has 20 monkeys running around, a purple camel, our little dog, some aliens, and the Goddess Isis watching over all. And we have been signing the puzzles "Willoughby Woods and Friends"
When we are done with our new puzzle, we take a picture of it, break it up and put it back in the box. We print out the picture, and put it in the box so someone can put it back together. Then we give it to one of our friends who like to do puzzles. We only ask that after they finish the puzzle, that they pass it along to someone else.
