My sweet little niece, C., lives sooo very far away from me.  In fact, she lives on a completely different continent on the other side of the world.  When I found this DIY idea to add pictures to a puzzle, I knew I had to do it.  I need that sweet girl and her soon to be brother or sister to have reminders of me (and the rest of their family) here, even when we’re a world away!

To begin, I purchased a fairly plain shape puzzle from Target.  I then chose photos of my parents, both of my brothers and their wives, my nieces, Mr. Blue, and me, and I had them printed as 4×6 prints.  It was a little bit challenging to find photos that would be just the right size for the shape, but eventually I managed to get most of them to work.  There are still a couple of photos that I need to switch out at some point.

I laid each puzzle piece on the respective picture and cut them out with an exacto knife.  Then, I glued them into the hole for that shape on the puzzle.  I wrote the name of that person on the puzzle piece.  Last, I covered up the names of the shapes on the puzzle board with silver mailing labels and wrote “Who loves us?  Our family!” across the two rows of labels.

I honestly thought C., who was not quite 18 months old, wouldn’t have any interest in the puzzle for quite some time, but I wanted to give it to her when they were back in the States for the birth of baby number 2.  Turns out, she loved it!  She did get a bit frustrated if she couldn’t get the pieces to fit fairly quickly, but as long as someone was around to come to her aid, she had a great time looking at the pictures and trying to put the pieces back on.

How old was your little one when they started having fun with puzzles?