Heye...To Be Continued Series
Heye puzzles are great puzzles. My Heye puzzle collection is growing faster than I can possibly puzzle, because I just can’t stop falling in love with all the gorgeous images they choose to print. I think they do a phenomenal job picking artists to represent their brand - ranging from colorful and modern, to dark and vampy, to adorable monsters living their best lives, to cartooney shenanigans. Heye is one of my favorite brands because of the sheer range of images they have available. And just when I didn’t think I could love them anymore, I stumbled onto something called their To Be Continued Series.
To Be Continued Series example fo two images combined into one
Each puzzle in a To Be Continued series can be its own stand alone image, but can also be pushed together with the other puzzles in that series to make a continuous image that seamlessly fit together. There’s something about the fact that an artist can work this hard to create a whole world that is able to be broken up into stand alone images OR work seamlessly together that just blows my mind!
By the Field by Heye
I started with By the Field, because all that orange kind of intimidated me. I’m also fairly intimidated by busy images (stay tuned- I have a future blog where I tackle some of the busiest puzzle images that scare me!), and this puzzle definitely humbled me. I was able to get the sky, mountains, hot air balloons and rainbow (one of my favorite parts of this puzzle) done fairly easily.
However, moving down, the rest of the puzzle was not nearly as easy! There weren’t big chunks of the puzzle that I was able to easily sort aside from green vs orange, so it became a ‘hunt and peck’ mission, coming together piece by slow piece. I generally like when I can sort my puzzles into big sections, and then piece the puzzle together large section by section, but this puzzle just wasn't built that way. Once I was able to pick up a rhythm though, this became quite a fun puzzle! I really enjoyed noticing all the quirky details and fun little scenes unfold.
By the Lake by Heye
By the Lake was actually much easier. I think it was because I had really found a rhythm with the first puzzle, and the second was so similar, that I was already familiar with the artist and the way he liked to build his characters! I wasn’t actually anticipating that the first puzzle would help me learn how to puzzle the second, but it was such a fun process puzzling two similar puzzles like this back to back.
My absolute favorite part was the rainbow- it was such a subtle but fun thing to puzzle in each image. I really love that this element carried over into each puzzle, even though it wasn’t on the border of each puzzle that directly touched each other.
By the Field and By the Lake by Heye
The puzzle boxes are so nice in these series as well. You’ll know you have a To Be Continued series on your hand if there are arrows on the front of the box. I also like this because it’ll let you know which direction the puzzle will continue on based on what side the arrows on. If you have more than two in your continued series- the middle puzzles will feature bidirectional arrows!
Now I started small, my To Be Continued series puzzles only had a total of two. If you’re looking for another series that only has two puzzles total, check out the Paradise in Winter and Paradise in Summer puzzles by Artist Michael Ryba:
However, if you wanted to go big- you can do that too! Heye offers a Continued Series that, up to this point, has 10 puzzles so far! Check out the Funky Zoo To Be Continued series by Artist Marino Degano:
Fundy Zoo - African Habitat by Heye
If the To Be Continues series intrigues you at all, I would highly recommend you try them out! Even though I knew I’d love these puzzles, I ended up enjoying this experience even more than I thought I would!
Until next time, happy puzzling!
Amanda @600hoursofpuzzle
PS: By the Lake and By the Field are images by Guillermo Mordilla. Do you think he may have added himself to his puzzle?
These are my favorite puzzles, especially those by Mordilla. I definitely think that's him!
I build Heye puzzles; preferably 1,000 to 2,000 pieces per. Heye makes exceptional puzzle pieces; so good one need not have that white bottle of Elmer's Glue-all handy. Unfortunately, Heye appears to have lost all their artists of humour & have since gone to this new wave of artwork I don't care for. However, I can remember the more than 100 Heye line of puzzles I've built over the years; sure beats those inky crossword puzzles.
