Lang, as in Puzzles, not Ant Man
The weather here in the PNW has definitely taken a turn for the fall lately. The gray days are outnumbering the sunny, the rainy days have definitely increased and the wind has gotten decidedly blustery. While I’m a huge fan of gray, blustery days (scarves, hot toddys and soups are my jam), the gray mixed with the high amount of drizzly days tends to get a bit much after a bit. Those are the times that I decide to take out my most colorful puzzles! I decided that the changing of the seasons called for a nice gradient, and since I won’t see them for another year, butterflies. One of my favorite butterflies here is the tiger swallowtail. They’ve been pretty abundant during the summer lately and I love seeing these huge yellow butterflies all around the house. Oh well, until next year! For now, I will enjoy them through this puzzle by Lang called Rainbow Butterflies.
The Lang Company has been around since 1982. They specialize in all sorts of gift and stationary products. Don’t be surprised in you order a Lang puzzle and get a box with a different name on it! Rainbow Butterflies was produced by Turner Licensing, and I had to do a little sleuthing to figure out who my puzzle was from! The other names you might see are Artisan or Wells St. Here are some examples of what you might see in their packaging.
Here is an example of their Turner Licensing packaging. It’s similar in size to a Buffalo box.
This packaging is from their Artisan line. The puzzle featured here is Ettavee. I haven’t done a puzzle from this line yet, so everything I talk about in this post will only concern their Turner Licensing line.
As I said above, the box is about the size of a Buffalo box, but thicker both in depth and construction. It’s absolutely more sturdy. The puzzle comes with a resealable plastic bag and a poster. The pieces run about 1.9mm thick and have a white backing. They are a standard ribbon cut with two-in, two-out shapes. I was a little concerned that I would have an issue with pieces fitting in numerous places, but as I pieced the puzzle together, I found that this was not the case. It was actually very obvious if I misplaced a piece. The finish has a very slight gloss and didn’t interfere with assembly. Like the box, the pieces very much reminded me of Buffalo pieces. They’re about the same size and construction, but the fit is a lot tighter. I was able to move good sized sections around my board. Here is my handy dandy piece comparison…
Unlike most gradients, I didn’t sort for this one. There were only five colors and there wasn’t a huge shift of hue between the colors. I sorted out the edges and got to work. I decided to work from left to right as the blue butterflies were the largest color area. The red was pretty straightforward, and then starting with the orange, you would have a mixture of 2 colors together (red orange, yellow green, blue purple). The change in color wasn’t too hard to do, where the puzzle got spicy was the texture of the wings. You had to really look and match the lines and patterns of the wings
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Is there anything more satisfying than a gradient progression series? I mean, I’m sure there is, but this definitely is pretty cool looking.
Some other puzzles in the Lang family are:
If Christmas puzzles are more to your liking, Lang has a huge selection of Christmas puzzles! Check out this one, Snowy Lights:
Lang puzzles come in sizes ranging from 300 pieces to 1000 pieces. I plan to try one from the Artisan line at some point and compare the two. Remember, try new puzzles if you can! You never know what treasures are out there unless you take a chance.
Happy Puzzling!
Gaby @puzzlepastime
