I FINISHED THE FIRST 6000 PIECE SECTION (24,000 Piece Puzzle – Part 2 of 6)

Check out part 3 Here

Oh, my gosh, you guys, i am blown away by how many people want to watch me. Do the 24 000 piece puzzle the view count on that video just went wild like hello to all of my new subscribers. So, after all of the prep work from the previous video today, it is finally time to get started on the actual puzzle. It is february 2nd it’s about 9 a.m.

I’M hoping that i can do all of the sorting today and also the edge for the first section and then we’ll just kind of see where we are and see if i want to get started on the middle. So here is my strategy. The sorting i anticipate is going to take about three hours. Basically, my rule of thumb is that when you’re sorting puzzle pieces, it’s about a half hour per thousand pieces, so for 6 000 pieces – that is three hours. I put all of the pieces in this box, which is the box top for the 5 000 piece gradient puzzle and they fit in there perfectly.

I also grabbed two more boxes. I have the box top from the other 5 000 piece gradient puzzle that i did and also the box top from the 2000 piece cloud. Berries gradient puzzle, i didn’t mean for them to all be gradient puzzles. These are just the best and biggest foxes that i have so when we’re looking at the image um, here’s how i’m planning to sort it. This morning, when i was like figuring this out, i was looking at this while i was making breakfast and i completely burned my breakfast, because i was just staring at this and not watching my food.

So obviously, i’m going to sort out the edge that’ll just go out onto the puzzle board, because i’m going to put it together right away, i’m also going to sort all of these fish down at the bottom, because i can already see a lot of those pieces. The white stripes are pretty distinct, so those are also just going to go out onto the puzzle board because i think that’s the first thing i’m gon na try to put together. Then i’m gon na sort all of the other colorful pieces, which is like the hot air balloons, maybe like some of these animals in here and then i’m also gon na sort out blue, which is the blue water and the blue sky and mountains. And i figure i can separate those out from each other once they’re all in one place, and then that just leaves all of the animals in the middle. They should be pretty easy to spot as well.

I mean, basically, this image is not hard to put together. It’S a really easy puzzle image, because everything is so distinct and they’re. You know very clean the lines between each different element, so i’m not anticipating it being that hard as a puzzle. It’S just the volume of the number of pieces is gon na take longer than you know, a smaller puzzle. So that’s the plan.

Let’S get into the sorting, [ Music ], so [, Music ]. Oh my god, you guys this is exhausting. I’Ve been at it for an hour and a half already, so i should be about halfway done. Let me show you so here we’ve got a nice pile of these fish pieces. These are all the pieces i still have to do.

There are the edge pieces. These blue pieces are actually looking really nice and then we’ve got the animal pieces and the uh colorful pieces. One thing to note is that, since these boxes are so far away from me, you know like i can’t i can barely reach them. Typically, i like to have all the pieces face up when they’re in the box, but for these i literally have to like throw the pieces into the box, so these are all over the place um. Once i’m done, i will go through and you know turn them all over, but the sorting is my least favorite part of the process, i’m just so ready to start actually putting this thing together.

I’M sure i’ll finish it today, i’m just like i’m feeling it in my back and i’m so tired already so i’ll get back to it this afternoon, [, Music, ] and with the very last piece i finished the sorting. That was a lot, but i want to show you out of 6 000 pieces. Look how little puzzle dust there is. That is like literally nothing. That’S incredible!

So i’ll just wipe that away onto my pants and the floor. So i also wanted to show you how i’m keeping track of all of my time. This is the exact same thing that i did when i did the 9 000 piece puzzle. Like 10 years ago, i literally like made myself a time card where i’m gon na write the times that i start and stop working on it each time. So when i add up the the times for the sorting, it took me three hours and three minutes which is like spot on to what my estimate was.

So the next thing i’m going to do is the edge which i really don’t think is gon na. Take that long, because you know there’s stuff going on all the way around the edge. The pieces look fairly easy to put together, plus i’ll, get to be like up and moving around the board a little bit more so i’ll, be able to stretch out a little bit working on all of the sorting. I was like basically in one position the whole time and my back got so sore. Luckily, it is a beautiful day out is like 70 degrees and sunny all day today.

I’Ve had all the windows open. Alright, so there’s your update. Now i’m going to work on the edge [, Music ], you guys, i just put together the first two pieces and they fit together perfectly now. Only uh 23 998 left to go [, Music, ], [, Music, ], all right. So i finished the edge and i think that’s where i’m going to leave it for today.

You can see here that i have tons of these pieces of all of these little fish down at the bottom. That’Ll fill like this bottom part of the puzzle, but i’m really tired of doing all of that sorting and then doing the edge was kind of a lot. The edge took me 40 minutes. So, as i said, not a problem went together super easily. I am missing one edge piece, i’m sure it’s just mixed up in here with all of these blue pieces, honestly with the amount of pieces there are, i’m surprised i didn’t miss more of them, but i’ll be back in a few days to actually get started on Working on the middle of the puzzle, you know like 40 minutes into this video series – [ Music ], so it is thursday, uh february 4th.

I have actually been planning on filming a different puzzle video today, but i woke up and i was just like i’m not feeling it all i want is to work on the big puzzle. So let me show you what the plan is for today, so i spread out all of these pieces. Look how beautiful that is. So this is all of these fish down at the bottom and that’s basically like the entire bottom. I don’t know fifth of the puzzle.

One interesting thing that i noticed is that the puzzle cut is actually a little bit larger than uh the reference image. So here you can see this yellow fish cuts off right at this like white stripe, whereas here you can see the yellow fish’s eye and then basically like this first line of pieces is where the picture cuts off. Also, look what i found it’s my missing edge piece, so she can just fit in right there and now the edge is complete. So i’m fully anticipating this to take all day um after that i have all of these colorful pieces, which is a lot of the hot air balloons, but i think we will be working on this on a different day: [, Music ], all right. So it’s been about 90 minutes and here’s where we’re at you can see.

I’M making. You know a bit of progress. It’S definitely um slow, going. Here’S the plan. I think i’m going to start working on the hot air balloons, because these colors are a little bit more differentiated and i’m pretty sure, i’m just missing a lot of pieces that don’t have the stripes on them.

I think they’re. All. Let me grab that. I think they’re all in here, so in order to make this a little easier to find what i’m looking for. I think i’m gon na pull out the hot air balloon pieces put those together and then come back to all of my little fishy squishy dish.

What a great day, like literally just puzzling all day, what else do you want in life? I think i might continue to work on this tonight, but i wanted to stop the time lapse now and just give you an update because it’s getting dark outside. So the lighting just won’t be good for the rest of the night. So here we are, that is day number one you can see. I made a lot more progress on the hot air balloons than i did on the fish, but here is that box again, and you can see that so many fewer pieces are left in here.

A lot of these are probably going to be going down um into the fish section, so it is just way easier to find what i’m looking for now. So i’m definitely making progress and i’ll check in the next time i get to work on it. [, Music ] all right everyone, so it is friday afternoon and now that i’ve done a fair bit of the puzzle, mostly up by the hot air balloons. I just thought that i would um share some thoughts of what i think so far so obviously um welcome to my rainbow of pieces. As you saw from the last clips, i tried to start working on the fish.

I got a little bit done, but honestly i wasn’t making much progress, and so i finally did what i should have done from the start, which is to separate out all of the fish pieces in rainbow order, and i also arranged them in a grid because originally They were, you know all over the place. I couldn’t even see what i was looking at and so now they’re all lined up and even as i was doing this sorting, i was putting in so many pieces because it’s so much easier now to see what i have so one thing that has been a Little annoying about this puzzle is that the pieces do not lock together at all, like you can’t move sections by picking them up. You have to do it literally like two pieces at a time, if you try to like pick up a section it’ll just like crumble. Apart, so that’s a little annoying with a puzzle, this big, so i’m always a little worried that if i like knock something off the board or or whatever you know, it’ll just be destroyed. Also, a lot of you warned me in the comments that this is a puzzle where the cut isn’t the most unique, so pieces can seem to fit where they don’t actually go so far.

I haven’t really had that problem because i’ve been working on like very distinct colorful areas of the puzzle. I am a little worried about it now that i’m well once i finish this like once i move into the water and the coral and the sky, where it’s more of a solid color or texture throughout a large area. I think that’s when it’ll get annoying so expect me to come back on here complaining about that pretty soon. I guess the main thing is just like realizing how much of a commitment this was. You know i looked at the picture and i was like this will be easy enough, but i didn’t really have in my mind the scale of just how big this is like.

I feel like i’ve already spent so many hours on it, and i still have all of this still to put together like everything in the middle, so i mean who knows how long it’s gon na take. This is definitely a commitment. I also sorted all of the blue pieces if you remember that box had been crazy filled up, so i sorted them into the sky, the coral like underwater and then the ripples on the top of the water [ Music ]. So now that those are separated out, it’s a lot easier to see what i need and i can work on the sky. So the plan for this weekend is to try to finish off the fish.

Now that i have all of this sorting done, it should go a lot faster now, so i think i can get it done and then i also want to try to do the sky, because i think it’ll be really satisfying to fill in a lot of that Area up there around the hot air balloons, as i said it’s friday afternoon now, so i might do a little bit here and there tonight, but tomorrow morning it is on i’ll. I’M going to be so ready to puzzle all weekend long all right! I think. That’S all i had to say: um yeah, happy weekend, happy puzzling in like two months when you’re seeing this [ Music ] [, Music, ], [, Music, ], [, Music, ], [, Music, ], [, Music, ], so [, Music ]. You guys look how good the puzzle is.

Looking. Let me update you on everything i’ve been doing for the last few days. It is currently uh thursday, the 11th, so i’ve had a few days since my last update i’ve been taking notes. That’S how you know that i’m serious about puzzling, so i sorted the fish pieces by color and that was definitely the right decision, not just because it looked really pretty, but also because it was way easier to see what i had and so the pieces just all Went in in an afternoon, that’s definitely been one of the trickiest parts of the puzzle, just because the colors overlap so much, but i got there in the end. After that, i tried to do a little bit of work on the sky, but, to be honest, i got a little bored of it, so i decided to start working on the animals [ Music ].

So i went through and i sorted out, the zebra, the cheetah, the giraffe, the red bird and the grass, and this time in the puzzle is actually my favorite time to sort, because it’s at this point that you’ve gotten to know the puzzle really well. And so, as you’re sorting through these pieces, you just find tons of pieces where you know immediately where they go and so you’re filling in, like small sections all over the puzzle of pieces that you had just been missing all along. So i put together all of those animals that i sorted out um each one, isn’t that large of a section, so they went together really quickly. So then, i went back to the sky and my strategy here was to sort the pieces by shape, which is just kind of what you have to do. When you have a large area.

That’S all one color or one texture doing that worked really well, and i got all of the pieces in without any big problems, and you can see that, as i’m finishing the sky, i’m actually creating the outline of all of the animals underneath. So those will be easier to work on with that outline already created. I didn’t film this part, but i also just did a bunch of these animals in here, like the camel just filling in a lot of that, i wasn’t feeling that well on the day that i did it, so i decided to just give myself a day to Enjoy working on the puzzle without worrying about camera angles and like filming everything, one more thing that i’ve done is i brought out these pieces of poster board, which are so useful now that i have large areas of the board covered up, because i can put all Of the pieces that i’m working with onto them and just extends the space that i have available to have pieces on the board, and then one more thing that i did just this morning is this water line which separates the underwater from the ripples on the top Of the water, so you can see that that brings us to today, and i basically have three puzzles left, because the great thing about this puzzle is that each section is very clearly separated. So i’ve already separated out into separate boxes all of the underwater pieces. All of the above water pieces and all of the animal pieces, so once i finish those three sections i’ll be done, this is actually going together way way faster than i anticipated, but don’t forget that this is only section one of four i still have to do.

All of this three more times, but i’m having so much fun and now that i’m you know probably halfway through it, is so satisfying to just look at the finished parts of the puzzle like with the reflection gleaning off of it and just seeing such a huge Expanse of finished puzzle pieces so this afternoon i think i’m going to try to finish up this underwater section and then it’s really probably only going to be two more days of work after that to do the above water and the animals. So i will check back in in a little bit: [ Music, ], [, Music, ], hmm, oh my gosh! That was a marathon puzzle session, but look i got the entire underwater section done in just about exactly four hours and then um here on the edge these pieces that connect the different sections are a little bit wider than all of the other pieces. So i was actually able to pull them out from the box of these pieces, and now i have a complete edge. So everything that’s in the middle.

There is all that is left of the puzzle. I am loving this i’m so excited that i get to do it three more times so yeah probably another day or two to finish it up and then i’ll be done, and then i can post this update, which people have been asking for good morning, everybody. So it is friday, the 12th – i think – and i think i might finish the puzzle today – it is 9 a.m. I’M planning to spend all day working on it.

So this morning i already separated out all of these water pieces by piece shape and they’re all oriented with the lines of the water, as you can see so there’s the other page of them. So that’s going to be all of this, and i’m definitely going to be referring to the picture quite a lot to see where all of the different animals are it cuts off about here. So basically, all of this is what i’m starting with another interesting thing. Is you can see that there are a few more wide pieces here in the middle and that’s because the cut of the puzzle actually repeats twice? So that’s the exact halfway point of this section of the puzzle.

You can see like right here. We have this guy. We have this tall guy and then over here we have the exact same piece configuration and like if i take out this piece – and i bring it over here and i try to swap them – it fits in perfectly so i have had um, maybe like twice when I was working down here on the water, where the pattern does repeat quite a lot. I did have a few times where i had pieces in the wrong spot, even though they fit perfectly, but for most of the puzzle, the pattern or like the design is unique enough that that hasn’t really been a problem. All right wish me luck, i’m so excited to get back to work on it.

[, Music, ], all right. It is 11. 30

Uh, you can sort of see my progress there. It’S coming along really! Well, i’m pretty sure i’m going to finish it this afternoon, so you can see that i got all of the water finished um.

I just have these spots here of the actual animals that are sitting in the water, and then i have this big section up here of this whole group of small animals. So i started pulling out all of these. Like light tan pieces, these white pieces so that’ll be like this bear, and this hippo and uh what’s down here. I don’t know this guy this rhino for the most part, though, i’m just planning to work on this all at once just kind of work. My way through and put in the pieces, you know as i find them, but this box is the last box of pieces.

It’S basically two two or three piece layers thick, so really not that many pieces left and i’m so excited to see this last part all come together: [, Music, ], [, Music, ] all right. It is 2 50 p.m, and we’ve hit a very important milestone. All of the pieces i have left fit on one single piece of paper. I do have these two little floating guys, which i have not put into place yet, but besides those two, this is all that’s left.

I would like to call our attention to this piece, which i mean, maybe i’m just missing, like a spot somewhere where i’m missing a piece, but it definitely does not belong with all of the other animals. It looks like it’s underwater and you know i filled in the entire underwater, so you can see this entire section is finished, so i’m wondering if this might be from a different section and it got mixed up into these pieces somehow. But i can worry about that. Later for now, i’m going to finish it up: [, Music, ], all right! Here we go the very last piece.

I did it. Oh, my god. The first section is complete. I am a quarter of the way through. I really thought that was gon na take longer.

I mean i only started it 10 days ago. I’Ve been keeping track of all of my times on my little time card, so my sister has made me a spreadsheet, so i will have a whole bunch of stats for you. So this one piece that i had just mentioned that like doesn’t seem to fit into this puzzle. I literally ran my hand over the entire puzzle to see if i was just missing a spot where i was missing a piece but they’re all here. So i think this is probably from one of the other sections and just got mixed up.

I mean it’s better to have an extra piece than to be missing a piece right, but i i’m so tired. I have so many thoughts that i’m going to share, but i’m just going to get a good night’s sleep and then i’ll be back to share all of my thoughts on this puzzle and also tell you what i’m going to do with it. To make space for the second section, so hang tight, [, Music ]. All right, i am back, and here is what you are all here for the final statistics: okay, so the total time that it took me to work on the puzzle like if i just took all of the hours that i worked on it and smushed them all Together 45 hours and 30 minutes, which is so much faster than i expected like do you remember when i talked about the 9 000 piece puzzle that i did back when i was in college, this one took me like just under two days of you know: full Puzzling and that one took me just over three weeks again adding up the hours it was over the course of a few months, but like three weeks of puzzling time, so i don’t know like why i did this one so much faster. I think it’s.

A combination of the picture being easier because, as i’ve been saying, there are so many small clearly different elements that it wasn’t, that hard to separate out the pieces and put each section together and also now that i just have a little more time to work on It for you know like nine hours a day, so that’s another one. The most time that i worked on it in one day was on just uh. I mean february 6th. I worked on it for about eight hours and 45 minutes and then the least amount of time that i worked on it in a day. It was on the ninth when i only did like just under three hours, so even on the day where i did the least puzzling, it was still you know, almost three hours of work and then just to get a visual of the amount of time that i Spent on it, my sister coded up this very fancy graph, showing the time of day that i spent puzzling for the 10 days that i worked on it, although i did skip a day in there, so it’s actually only nine days of actual puzzling.

So my overall thoughts um – this is already one of my favorite puzzles i’ve ever done. I cannot wait to do the other three sections young me who has coveted this puzzle for like years and years clearly has good taste. Again, though, i just think back to the 6 000 piece puzzle that i did in high school, and i remember that being out for like months like what took me so long did i just get way better at puzzling. I guess again now i have more time to work on it. I don’t have school and homework and everything but yeah.

This was way way faster than i expected. However, the pace that i did this first section is definitely not um sustainable. I’M definitely gon na take like a week or two off before i start the next section, because when i have a puzzle in progress, i will drop all of my other responsibilities just to work on the puzzle like after i finished this. I just had a weekend. It’S been a few days since i finished it and i cleaned my whole apartment.

I went for a run. I finally started watching bridgerton like it’s amazing, how much you can get done when you’re not constantly working on a big puzzle. So, of course, i am going to do the other few sections, i’m just going to space them out a little so that i don’t neglect everything else in my life. Just so that i can work on this beautiful, wonderful puzzle, and now here is the million dollar question. What am i going to do with this piece of the puzzle in order to work on the next section?

I’Ve you know talked to my family, about it. Um, the guest that i’ve heard the most is that i made a second one of these boards to just layer on top, and you know that would be fine, but it’s not what i’ve done. What i’m actually going to do is break the puzzle up into sections and then cover the back with a blue tape, and then i can stack up the sections in the box. So that’s actually exactly what i did for both of the um five thousand piece gradient puzzles. You can see.

I mean they basically look like placemats almost um. The back is covered in blue tape, and so it just makes these sections that stack up in the box. That i can pick up and move around and then they slot back together. That’S how i was able to put the first 5 000 piece puzzle back together on the floor in order to show the two of them side by side, so i actually have a little secret for you. I already started covering the back with blue tape, and so half of it is already taped together in sections.

Look at that. So each section is 20 pieces by 27 pieces and they just stack right in there [ Music ]. So i do want to walk you through exactly how i do it in case. Any of you want to try it for yourself, so the first thing to do is to count out where the separation of each section is going to be and then take out a line of pieces and just put them on top of the puzzle piece section so That you can gently kind of pull it away from the rest of the puzzle. Then you can push those pieces back into place and since this puzzle, as i said before, does not hold together at all the pieces do not lock together, you have to be really careful with this part, carefully hold up another piece of foam board and then slide The puzzle onto that second piece then sandwich another piece of foam board on top and pressing them together really tightly flip the whole thing over now you can use blue tape to cover it, covering it first horizontally and then vertically, and i know that there are other Ways to do this, um, like contact paper.

I know that there’s like puzzle, specific contact paper, but i found that blue tape is number one really cheap for the amount of space that we’re gon na have to cover, and also since it’s a smaller strip of adhesive. It’S easier to get it right up to the edge of all of the puzzle pieces and since we go both horizontally and vertically, it ends up being really strong. So you can just pick up the entire thing, so you’re just going to repeat that for all of the different sections of the puzzle: [, Music, ], well, i’ve got section one packed up and i have a dining room table again for like a week until i Start the next section, so one more thing that i made sure to do was to remove the last line of pieces of where the first section is going to connect to the second section. I broke it up and put it on this piece of poster board so that it doesn’t take up such a huge area and so that when i start the next section, i can just put these back together and then i have something to work off of, and I have one of the edges already in place, so i’d love to know in a comment. What do you think do you have any questions?

Is there anything that you want to see a little differently in the next video, because remember i’m doing this three more times and of course make sure that you follow me on instagram and or twitter, and i will be keeping you guys updated right there. When i start the next section so you’re going to need a code word for the comments um, i think it is going to be a fish, because that was the hardest part of this section of the puzzle. Well, thank you for coming along on this journey with me. Thank you for watching all the way to the end of this very long, video and happy puzzling,