An altered puzzle is a collage of sorts, a set of mini pieces of artwork. Each puzzle piece serves as a separate canvas; when you’re finished with them all, you reassemble the puzzle. As you can see, the one to the left (which I’m using as my example), isn’t finished yet. I went ahead and more-or-less assembled it, though, so you could get the idea. This is my first altered puzzle, so I’m learning along with you.
You will need:
- a puzzle to alter
- a pen
- gesso and a brush
- whatever else you want to use to decorate the puzzle
What you do:
STEP 1: Choose a puzzle. As I said, I’m new to this, but it seems to me that a puzzle with relatively large pieces is preferable. A puzzle with pieces that are only an inch-and-a-half “square” will have less working space than that, because of the cutouts. I chose a children’s puzzle from the dollar store, because it was cheap (so I don’t have to worry too much about ruining it), it only had 24 pieces (an easier start), and the pieces were large enough to work with, but not huge. Definitely don’t use a treasured puzzle! If you don’t find one at the dollar store or someplace similar, check thrift stores.
STEP 2: Assemble the puzzle and label it. You will now want to put the puzzle together. (Another good reason for not using a 1500-piece puzzle!)
Carefully flip it over, and label each piece. If you think you will be working on more than one altered puzzle, you might want a constant designation to tell you which puzzle the piece belongs to. You will definitely want to number the pieces in order, though, to make it easier to put them all back in place when you’re done. (I labeled all of mine, then decided I wanted the finished puzzle to be oriented the other direction, so mine are numbered twice.)
Now that the puzzle is numbered, the pieces don’t need to be kept in order for the remaining steps. (Do keep orientation in mind, though. I accidentally made one of my – very directional – pieces upside-down. Fortunately, the other pieces I’ve made so far aren’t overly directional, so I can just make all remaining pieces upside-down, too. But learn from my mistake and pay better attention than I did.)
STEP 3: Coat the fronts of the pieces with gesso
The gesso serves as a primer, allowing the paint (or whatever else you use) to grip the surface better than if you had tried to paint directly over the original, glossy surface. I gave my puzzle pieces two coats: one vertically, then another horizontally after the first had dried. Let the gesso dry thoroughly before moving on.
STEP 4: Decorate your pieces. There are no rules here; you can do this any way you like. (You probably do want to avoid things sticking off the edges so the pieces will go back together later.) They don’t necessarily even have to be 2-dimensional! If you’re new to this, having a theme might help you come up with ideas. My pieces, in this puzzle, are all Scripture-themed. (Can you identify Philippians 4:13, Genesis 1:1, and Proverbs 10:10?)
The pieces I’ve finished so far are all different. The strong man has the background painted solid white. He is then drawn on with Sharpie.
The light/dark was a chance to play with some specialty paints. It’s painted entirely with craft acrylics, but there’s an iridescent layer added to the day and glow-in-the-dark dots added to the night.
The red corner piece was, again, painted red as a background so nothing would show through. I then used red glitter glue (also from the dollar store) to adhere red rhinestones (pulled from a dollar store ornament – are you seeing a theme here?).
Many crafters also participate in swaps for these. To swap, you send the designated number of pieces from your puzzle, labeled (!) to each swapper, who then decorates them and sends them back to you. At the end of the swap, you have a collection of pieces of mini-artwork that all connect to one another.
If you have any questions, ask away, and I’ll try to answer them.
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