Eurographics Almond Branches by Vincent Van Gogh 1000-Piece Puzzle

This is one of the most challenging puzzles I have put together, but I loved it! Yes, some of the pieces do have crazy angles and some look like edge pieces but are not. That's part of why the EuroGraphics puzzles are great for puzzle fans seeking a true challenge. This probably took me close to three weeks to put together, working on it a few hours a day at most. The colors are so vibrant! I plan on framing this one.If you're looking for something easy to complete that you can finish and put away in a few days, this is not your puzzle. If you really want to test yourself and your puzzle completing skills, this is well worth the effort it takes to complete.

How hard is this puzzle? I do a lot of 1,000-piece puzzles by myself, and this is one of the most, if not the most, difficult puzzles I have ever assembled. I typically put the box/image away and assemble a puzzle without it. On a more difficult puzzle I will "cheat" and look at the box if I am stuck, but for this puzzle, I was never able to put the box top away. It took nearly 4 months, and I couldn't even say how many hours. A couple times I drank too much wine and spilled my boxes of sorted pieces, so I had to stop drinking wine on puzzle nights. I would rate this puzzle's difficulty as: Damn near, but not quite impossible.I sometimes think I am more of a fan of puzzles that the pieces are cut more uniformly (like Ravensburger brand) because I worry that unique shaped pieces make it easier to assemble, but this puzzle sure proved me wrong. I had a lot of "this piece is so ridiculous it can't possibly go in this puzzle" moments, even at the end when I was down to the last 50 or so pieces. There was also plenty of "well of course I can't find the piece that fits here, because this other piece is in the wrong place."I saw some reviews that the image quality was bad, but there is nothing particularly sharp about the blurred lines of a 19th century oil painting, so I thought the image quality was fine considering the original art. I found myself looking for patterns in brush strokes to determine where pieces went, so the quality of the image couldn't have been too bad.I would recommend this puzzle and this brand.

Beautiful puzzle that took way to long to finish! It is definitely a challenge.. I would say do not give up on it, the end result is beautiful. You would think that the solid blue is the hardest part, but it isn't, those branches though... If you THINK you are missing a part, you probably aren't.. Happened to me too many times, it's just that you are looking for a piece and once you get it you realize is completely diferent than what you thought it was going to be! Definitely recommend it ! Fun and challenging

This puzzle, like others from this brand, is well made and results in a beautiful image when completed. It's challenging to be sure -- the subtle differences in the blues will leave you squinting at the pieces still to be placed and perhaps moving some, en masse, to allow the sunshine from an open window to shine upon them in the hopes of getting some clues. The challenge of this puzzle was at a good level for me -- I never felt despairing of completing it -- but knew that it would (and did!) take some time.

All the pieces are normal puzzle pieces without any weird/funky shapes. It isn't the easiest puzzle I've done, nor is it the most difficult. On a scale from 1-10, for me it is an 8.I know beautiful to me might not be beautiful to you, but if you like Van Gogh, it's a fun puzzle. The colors are cool and calm. The flowers and branches on the tree have good detail, you can really gain an appreciation of his genius.I'm still debating whether to glue and frame it or take it apart and put together again in a few months. Either way that tells you how much I like it.

a very difficult puzzle! I wanted a puzzle that would challenge me more than most puzzles and a puzzle that would last longer than 4 days. THIS PUZZLE FIT ALL OF THAT CRITERIA AND MORE. your mind set has to be different than most puzzle. At first, my mind set was to get 30 pieces a day. Once the puzzle was a little over half done, my goal was 50 pieces a day. one reviewer said it took him 50 to 60 hours to complete and I agree.this puzzle is a great puzzle if you want a great challenge!! but if you want a normal puzzle, you will have no chance to finish this puzzle.

I like doing puzzles based on Van Gogh painting because they produce the subject-matter just enough so that your mind and eye form an expectation of what a piece should look like, but the artist's rendition of it is not quite what you expect. I had to work closely at trying to identify the location of individual pieces by studying the finished picture. As a result, I had to gradually build out the tree limbs and flowers, and then fill in the background blue. It was not the way I usually work jigsaw puzzles, so the challenge was unique. A unique challenge is a typical result of working on a puzzle based on a Van Gogh painting.

Extremely difficult