Doing jigsaw puzzles for 12 HOURS straight

Good morning, everybody, it is 7 30 a.m, and i am about to do jigsaw puzzles for 12 hours straight. This is a video that i’ve been wanting to make for months now it has been on my calendar, but i just kept putting it off and pushing it back, because this is like an all-day commitment, but today is the day, but before i get into it, i Do have something that i want to talk to you all about, so let me throw it back to karen from the past hi everyone. So it is the day before my 12 hour challenge and i’m currently preparing all of my puzzles. I’M taking off the plastic, wrap getting the pieces out of the plastic bags and into the boxes so that tomorrow, when it’s time to actually do these puzzles, i can just open up the box and go so while i work on this, i just wanted to talk To you guys about the better help, today’s video is sponsored by better help and i want to say a huge thank you to them for helping to support my channel.

So they wanted me to ask you: is there something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals, and i think the better question is what isn’t affecting our happiness and preventing us from achieving our goals? I know that i personally like went through pretty much the entire pandemic, coping being mostly fine and then just the other night. Now that i’m like vaccinated and starting to travel again and starting to go out into the world again and all of the stressors that are outside in the world outside of my little puzzle studio, you know that’s the time that i had a full-on meltdown and it Would have been really nice if i had a professional to talk to so that’s where better help comes in better help is online therapy, so they will assess your needs and match you with a fully licensed professional therapist. Once you decide that you want to get started, you can start communicating with your therapist within 48 hours. Don’T worry.

Everything is very secure and safe and they have over 15 000 therapists. So if there’s a specific issue that you need help with, you know the people in your area might not be able to specialize in that, but with better help you can access this huge range of therapists that can help you with your specific problems, plus, if you Find that you’re, not you, know, vibing with your therapist, you can change counselors really easily. So if you want to get more information and sign up, you can go to betterhelp.com karenpuzzles. That is h-e-l-p, so the link will be right down below.

If that’s something that you want to look into for now, i have a bunch of puzzles to continue opening up. So i’m going to finish that and back to karen in the future, all right, so we have about 25 minutes until i’m gon na get started. So let me tell you the rules i have spent the last few months, collecting relatively easy, 500 piece puzzles, so all of the puzzles i’m gon na – do are 500 pieces. These are from all different brands, because i wanted a range of images and piece types and for full disclosure. All of them were gifted to me, except for the rifle paper.

Co puzzles and the area wear puzzles those i bought myself. Now i’m not going to be too hard on myself, i am allowed to eat and go to the bathroom and stretch i’m just gon na try to do any of that between puzzles, so that when i write down the times, i just work straight through. So i think that’s about it once the clock hits 8 a.m. I’M going to get started with my first puzzle.

Oh my god. What did i get myself into? Why do i do this all right? It is 7. 59.

We are one minute out, so the first puzzles i’m going to start with. Are the gradient puzzle uh from cloudberries? This is the new 500 piece version, as well as the cascade puzzle, also from cloudberries. This is like another version of the gradient, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. Oh my god!

Oh my god. It’S 8 a
M: okay: here we go, i’m getting started gradient puzzle. This is the first one up um i’m gon na do probably both of these and then i will be back to check in and let you know how i’m doing: [, Music ] so [, Music, ], [, Music, ], [, Music, ] all right. So i just finished my first two puzzles: it is about 9 45. So i’m just rolling right through these i’m making really good time.

Let me get them onto foam board so that i can sort of get them off the table and make space for the next one anyway. I think i’m going to knock out one more puzzle here in this room and then i’m going to move out to the living room. I’M planning to be all over my apartment today, because i don’t want to be leaning in the exact same position all day. Long like that would be so painful, so i’m gon na do this rifle paper co puzzle. I have had this puzzle for ages.

I think it looks beautiful and i’ve just been like waiting for a video where i can actually do it. So today’s the day, let’s get this one done yeah, i don’t know what i’m i don’t know. Why am i already like losing my mind and we’re not even two hours in [, Music ], so [, Music, ], [, Music, ], [, Music ]? All right? It is 10 45 that is three puzzles down uh that took exactly one hour, which is interesting like two the minute, but i’m going to head out to the living room now to work at my dining room table.

I brought two puzzles out there with me, so that should take me through lunch, and this is fun so far. This is really fun. Okay, actually i decided to grab three puzzles and i’m just gon na. Do them one right next to each other, all the way down my really long table. So we have this lucky charms puzzle from white mountain.

It has you know the color separation, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. Then we have this areaware pattern puzzle. Maybe a little more difficult, but there’s enough, you know separate different colors that i think it should be okay and then we have a round puzzle from betterco, again lots of sort of gradient, color separation. So let’s do these [ Music, ], [, Music ]! Oh man, that was the hardest one, yet that took almost two full hours and at the end of the video i will talk about each one in a lot more detail right now, i’m going to take like five minutes off to warm up some lunch and then Get started on one of the other two puzzles, while i have lunch: [, Music ].

So i just finished my fifth puzzle. This areaware puzzle really fun. It is 2 30, which means that i’m over halfway through only five and a half hours left to go. What have i gotten myself into [ Music ]? You know i’m actually starting to get a little tired.

So i just finished my sixth puzzle. It is 4 30 and i think i’m gon na head back into the studio, because the light is starting to go out here. It’S getting a little dim, so i think i need the lights that are in there. This puzzle again took me a full two hours. It was so much harder than i thought also there were some quality like manufacturing issues, so i’m going to talk about that at the end of the video, but for now, let’s head back into the studio.

All right, i have five puzzles left that i had pulled for this challenge, which one do i think will be the easiest thinking either this one or this one. Let’S start with this one i think that’ll be fun. This is a new one from inner peace and yeah. Those colors will be really fun. Let’S do it [ Music ].

Well, that is puzzle. Number seven finished. I have so much that i want to say i have so many thoughts, but i only have two hours left, so i’m gon na move right into our next puzzle. [, Music, ] puzzle – number eight is by lemonade pursuits. It says really nice illustration lots of different things going on, so i’m sure that i’ll be able to finish this one we’ll see if i can get another one done after that: [ Music ], all right, i’m already going i’m already working on the sorting, because it Is 7 15.

I only have 45 minutes left. I thought about just stopping completely, but i didn’t want to stop early. I want to finish the 12 hour challenge, so i’m gon na do as much as i can, and i will check back in at eight here – is a little preview of the puzzle that i’m working on. This is another one from areaware [, Music ]. Oh, my god, it is 7 55

I have five minutes left of the 12 hour challenge and then i will have puzzled for 12 hours straight.

That’S wild! Oh my god! Oh my god! This is so stressful, even though i know for a fact that i’m not going to finish it. I just i want to get as much done as i can.

Oh, my god, 7 57 3 minutes left. How much can i get done? How many more pieces can i put in 7 59. one minute left? Oh, my god, i’m tempted to just like sit here and finish it, but like no.

I need to cut myself off. I think that’s uh plenty of puzzling for one day: [, Music ]. Oh my god, it’s eight o’clock! It’S eight o’clock! I did it, i’m stopping!

I’M not putting in any more pieces, i’m done so. How many puzzles did i do eight and a half, and you know i actually thought i would be a lot more um, tired and sore than i am i’m. You know a little hungry, but i feel fine. I feel totally fine, i feel like i can keep going. What is wrong with me anyway, i am going to stop here.

I will be back tomorrow to give you all the stats to give you all of my reviews of all eight and a half puzzles all right. Maybe i am a little uh loopy [, Music ], all right. So that was a lot, but in the end i managed to do eight and a half puzzles in one day that is wild. Of course we have all the data, so i’m going to put some charts on screen right now easily. The ones that took the longest were the lucky charms and the paint swatch puzzles, which each took me about two hours.

Looking back on it now, if i had swapped out those two for easier puzzles, i definitely could have finished nine puzzles because that areaware one that i was working on right at the end. It only took me another 24 minutes to finish so. I was like i was almost there: [ Music ] [ Applause ], but where i left it, i had put in 331 pieces on that last puzzle and the lucky charms puzzle had 550 pieces, not 500. So that means that my total number of pieces in 12 hours is hang on. I forgot the exact number 4381, which i think is very solid for one day of puzzling, i’m happy with that.

Overall, it was not as difficult as i was expecting it to be. I definitely hit a bit of a lull around the paint swatch puzzle, which was like mid-afternoon, because that one was just so difficult, but otherwise i felt great, i felt totally fine. It was such a fun day and usually when i’m doing small puzzles like this i’ll, give myself some kind of handicap. You know. Maybe i won’t spread out all of the pieces or i won’t look at the box or i won’t do the edge first.

You know just to make the puzzling process last a little bit longer, but in this case it was really fun to just go all out to just speed my way through all of these relatively easy puzzles. Okay, so, let’s just go through them. I’M going to give a really quick review on each puzzle. First up is the cloudberries gradient puzzle. You’Ve already seen me: do the thousand piece version and the 2000 piece version of this puzzle.

So this is the exact same image, it’s just smaller, so it was exactly what i thought it was going to be. Cloudberries has only recently started, releasing 500 piece puzzles and you’ve probably seen a lot of them on my instagram. I think their image curation is really great, so i love to this one next up is the cloudberry’s cascade puzzle. This is the fastest puzzle that i did. It only took me 47 minutes and that totally makes sense, because it is a gradient you’re, basically just putting colors in order, but everything is a little more defined than the first gradient puzzle.

So it’s just really easy to. You know put the colors in order and then just slot them into place. Next is the rifle paperco puzzle. They released this set of four puzzles last year. I bought all of them and then i was just kind of waiting to do them until i could include them in a video, so i’ve done two of them now.

I think i’ll just have to go ahead and finish the other two now that i’ve gotten to show it to you guys. I am fully obsessed with the rifle paper co illustration style. I have like an oven mitt with their fabric. I have all kinds of stuff that is from this company, so the puzzles are no exception. This image, since it is so broken up into you, know, 12 squares was pretty easy to do since you could just kind of separate out all of the background colors.

So i really enjoyed this one. I think it’s so beautiful. Next up is the lucky charms puzzle, and this is the first one where i was like. Oh maybe maybe i made a mistake. You know the color separation is there, so you can separate out the different sections, but since the colors repeat you end up with you know two sections of each color which made it a little more tricky and then within each section you don’t get like the second Gradient, like you did with the cascade puzzle, you know everything within each section looks exactly the same, so this turned out to be a lot more tricky than i was expecting.

Also, i’m not a fan of how the image cuts off at the bottom of the box. At a different place than it cuts off on the puzzle, so there’s a lot more on the image than you see on the box and yeah there’s nowhere in here that they give you like a postcard or anything of the fall image. So you really do have to look all the way around the box to see the full thing. Also, the lucky charms logo is centered on the box and it is not centered on the puzzle that really bugs me. Why would they do that yeah?

I don’t like that next is this pattern puzzle from the areaware uh dusan duson collection? I am a big fan of all of these puzzles um. They sent me one of them a long time ago and then i just decided. I wanted the entire collection, so i bought the other ones as well as the thousand piece version, and i just love graphic illustrations like this on a puzzle. I love just pulling out the colors one by one and seeing it take shape this one for me is like the perfect amount of slightly tricky, but still pretty easy, and also just aesthetically beautiful love.

This next up is the bitter co paint swatch puzzle. This is the other one that i had some issues with, so i love better co. I think their rectangular puzzles are all really high quality, great images. I have loved them as a company like since they started, but this particular puzzle had some issues um, it’s something that i’ve never seen before. It’S so weird.

The puzzle was printed in two halves and the cut on each half is exactly the same, but they don’t perfectly line up when they join down the middle. So you end up with these gaps between the pieces, so i kept thinking that i had pieces in the wrong place. The image is fairly low quality. It’S like a little more pixelated than i would expect. Also, the colors on the puzzle are much more dull than the colors on the box, so it was a lot harder to see that gradient.

Also, this one was entirely me: um, the glare from the window made it so that i like couldn’t even see the the back half of the puzzle. So i like couldn’t even see what i was working on. So this one was just a lot going wrong. All around, however, i did get in touch with vin, who runs betterco and he cleared up why this one is so much lower. Quality turns out because of different kovid related reasons.

Their printer had to change the way that they were printing some of their puzzles, and that’s why it was printed in two halves. A few other people have complained about that and they have replaced all of the puzzles that have the same issues as i just showed. You they also destroyed all of the remaining stock that had these issues, so he told me that they’re going to go back to their usual way of printing circular puzzles, so hopefully um. You know if you buy a puzzle from now on, it won’t have those issues, but i don’t have any other circular puzzles from them to compare to so um yeah. I think i just got one from the bad batch, hopefully in the future.

Um you’re not gon na have those issues, but i definitely considered like, as i was getting into this one, just throwing in the towel just cutting my losses. Moving on to an easier puzzle, i do kind of wish i had done that, but i thought it kind of went against the spirit of the challenge. I thought that once i started a puzzle, i should just go ahead and finish it, but this one was a struggle all right. Moving on inner peace is a company that i talked about really early on my channel. I actually, i still have their puzzles right there.

Behind me, they recently came out with some 500 piece puzzles and were very kind to send them to me, and i love this one so much just like the areaware puzzle that i talked about, it’s just a really fun graphic illustration: with really distinct bright colors. They definitely win for cutest packaging. Look at this little pouch that all of the pieces come in so cute. I will say that there were more solid white pieces than i was expecting, so i definitely slowed down a little at the end trying to get all of those into place, but you know i got there eventually um. I didn’t have the issue with pieces, fitting where they didn’t go, so you know i felt like i was always moving forward, so i really really enjoyed this one.

Next. We have this puzzle from lemonade pursuits. This company is fairly new to me. I only recently started doing their puzzles and i am fully obsessed. I love their illustration styles.

I love the kind of wavy shapes of their pieces. I think they’re really cute really fun and like aesthetically nice. This is the first 500 piece puzzle that i’ve done by them. I’Ve only done a thousand piece puzzles in the past and yeah super fun, not too difficult. Everything is broken out pretty pretty easily, but this these lines.

In the background, i did slow down a little there. That was fairly tricky, although i will say make sure if you do this, that you have the space for it because for a 500 piece puzzle, this is really really big. Although you know on the flip side, if you are looking for puzzles with big puzzle, pieces um, this is a great one for you. And finally, we have my final puzzle, which is from the areaware puzzle in puzzle series. All of the photos are by kanghi kim.

This is one of my favorite series of puzzles. I’Ve ever done. The thing with these puzzles is that each one has kind of a center element to it where the puzzle pieces are cut on an angle, and so you get these fun like different differently shaped puzzle, pieces in the middle, and then this whole center section can kind Of lift out and be its own little puzzle. I bought all of the puzzles from this series. You might have seen some of the other ones on instagram.

They are some of my absolute favorites, i think they’re, so so beautiful and then i also just really quickly wanted to talk about this grey melon double-sided puzzle. You might have seen it in my pile of puzzles that i was planning to do and i just didn’t get to it in the actual challenge, but in the last few days i just did it on my own, like just for fun. I actually did it twice once from the front and once from the back, the front took me an hour and 40 minutes and the back took me an hour and 27 minutes. So i really wish that i had just done this one as part of the challenge. Instead of either the paint swatch or the lucky charms puzzle, i think if i had done this one instead i would have finished nine complete puzzles, but it’s fine, i’m fine!

It’S fine! Um! I really like this puzzle. I’Ve been wanting to do it for a while. Now i think the images are really fun.

I love grey melons, photography and yeah. Just super colorful really fun. So if i did this challenge again, i would definitely plan out my puzzles a little bit better plan. The order that i was going to do them put a little more real thought into how difficult they would actually be. I would also hire a camera person to come, be here with me for the day because turns out running your own cameras and also trying to do speed.

Puzzling does not mix you know, since i was so focused on the puzzles. I didn’t get as many in progress shots as i wanted, and i wish i could have gotten more footage of how i was feeling you know. While i was working on all of the puzzles, but it takes a lot of time to adjust cameras to get different angles um, you know to vlog, while you’re like working on a puzzle so yeah in the future. I would just need a second person to come. Help out with it, but i think it would be really fun to do this challenge once a year, just kind of as a benchmark to see how much i can improve year after year see how much i can optimize the 12 hour challenge.

Fun fact, if i had only done the cascade puzzle like over and over again at 47 minutes each, i could have done 15 puzzles, or i could have done this one puzzle 15 times with time to spare. But my average time was an hour and 20 minutes which i mean that’s about what i expected for a 500 piece puzzle, so maybe i’m being a little hard on myself. So i would love to know in a comment. Would you take on this challenge? Do you ever do more than one puzzle in a day, or you could tell me you know which puzzle was your favorite?

Have you ever done any of these puzzles that i showed so much to talk about your code word for the comments to. Let me know that you watched all the way to the end will be 500, and that is it from me. Happy puzzling. I will see you all in the next one.