Somewhere Over the Rainbow Puzzles
What is it about a rainbow, gradient or any such type of color explosion puzzle that we love so much? If you scroll through Facebook or Instagram, you’ll find that posts with these puzzles have a larger amount of likes than other posts. It is that we are naturally drawn towards more colorful images? Do we like the soothing way colors can blend together? Who knows? But ever since I saw Dorothy transform from sepia to amazing technicolor, I wanted all the color. Thank goodness I was a child of the 80’s, because I had Lisa Frank to guide my color obsession. I may have toned down my wardrobe in my later years, but please, give me all the color puzzles! I know I recently talked about gradient puzzles in the Holiday Gift Guide that Diane and I recently wrote, but colorful puzzles are so much fun, I thought that I would focus on them a little more.
I recently assembled Springbok’s Pencil Pushers. It’s a 500 piece puzzle and it is absolutely fabulous. I love it so much that I wish Springbok would make it into a 1000 piece! If you’ve never tried a Springbok puzzle, I highly recommend it. Springbok is an amazing company that has been around since 1963! I won’t go into them too much right now, because I have an adorable Springbok Christmas puzzle that I’ll be posting about later this month. Apparently, I am turning my blog posts this month into a series!
Areaware puts out a wonderful selection of gradient puzzles. Whats wonderful about them is that they range in size from 100 to 1000 pieces! Their gradients only have two colors, so they might not be for the faint of heart, but they truly are stunning to look at. The puzzles are separated into red/orange, yellow/green, green/blue, pink/royal blue and black/white. I recently received the 500 piece version of the pink/royal blue gradient for my Puzzle of the Month subscription.
Cobble Hill is another amazing brand that has put out a beautiful series of rainbow puzzles from artist Shelley Davies. Their rainbow series consists of eight 1000 piece puzzles. It includes all the colors of the rainbow including pink and black/white. A mashup of all the colors (except black/white) is available in 1000 piece and 2000 piece. I’m slowly working my way through the series, I’ve done Blue and the 2000 piece rainbow mashup.
Buffalo Games puts out a TON of rainbow puzzles. Not only do they license images from Aimee Stewart, the Queen of Color, they are the creators of the diabolical Vivid Color Challenge! I thought that puzzle would be a snap until I got to the red/orange section. Let me tell you, I was humbled very quickly! They also have a lot of really lovely 300 piece rainbow puzzles, which is an excellent option for those who just want to dabble in rainbow madness and not fully immerse themselves.
Lamington Drive is truly at the top of the gradient game. Their line of gradient puzzle boasts 8 different variations of their original CMYB (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) puzzle. Each puzzle piece is it’s own hue, completely different than the other pieces! One of the expansions is the 1000 Colors Wheel, which is the original gradient, in circle form! You not only have the gradient challenge, but also the trickiness of a round puzzle. The Vibrating Colors version features dots of complimentary colors over the original puzzle. The result being that this puzzle has a vibrating optical illusion effect. The Halftone Colors puzzle is probably the coolest one, in my opinion. They basically took the halftone image, which is comprised of dots of color, rather than continuous color and enlarged it! When viewed at a distance, you see the same image as the original! How cool is that?! That one is definitely on my wish list.
This is only a small sampling of the rainbow and gradient puzzles available, as there are many more brands that I didn’t list. Chronicle Books and Eeboo also have a ton of rainbow puzzles in their catalogue that you should definitely check out. I hope that I’ve helped you add some awesome puzzles to your wishlist or at least pointed you in the right direction. And if you aren’t a fan of colorful puzzles, I hope that I’ve at least given you a couple of reasons to switch your puzzle game from sepia to technicolor every now and then.
Gaby @puzzlepastime
