This week we are spending the week at our house in Denver with my sister, Heather, and her family. With several of our kids and adults together for the week, it is the perfect time to pull out some games to keep everyone busy and enjoying our time relaxing and having fun together.
Heather and I brought the perfect product for this fun!
It's called Puzzle Face and is from our friends at StickTogether. As you read in my blog post a few weeks ago,
Inside each Puzzle Face box, there are 300 puzzle pieces, and with these same 300 pieces, you can make any face, take it apart, and put them back together another way to make any other face. You'll notice that the 300 pieces have different shadings on one side, and are coded 1-60, in one of five colors, on the other side.
One puzzle. Infinite solutions.
With Puzzle Face, one single 300-piece puzzle can be assembled and re-assembled again and again to make any face.
Like all of StickTogether products it is for all ages and abilities. It is not competitive. It's relaxing, social, casual and fun.
Let me show the fun Puzzle Face brought to our family! You can follow these steps to play Puzzle Face with your family and friends too.
First, scan the QR code on the Puzzle Face box.
The Puzzle Face Image Key app only works on mobile.
It will bring up the Puzzle Face app. It allows you to upload a photo. This can be any photo of yourself....a new one or one saved on your device.
My niece, Riley, took a photo on the Puzzle Face app to upload.
Riley really wanted to use her dog, Milo, picture but I mentioned to her that human faces work best. She agreed and even decided to take off her glasses for Puzzle Face.
Once her picture was uploaded into the Puzzle Face app, she took 2 fingers and enlarged the face in the frame. You want to do this before you save the Image Key.
The Puzzle Face image you see on the right (in the app) is what you’ll be creating so make sure you like it before you save it.
One note... every time you see a black and white Puzzle Face on the right, there is a code behind it - you can build that image. Just play around with the framing and size on the left and choose a Puzzle Face you like.
You will then save the Image Key. It will look like the photo above. The Image Key tells you which piece to put where, and in which orientation, using the coded side of the puzzle pieces.
Since we were going Puzzle Face with a group of people, Riley sent the save Image Key to her...
...iPad so it was larger for everyone to see. I love how handy it is to share the Image Key digitally.
You could also print the Image Key. I did that at school while we were working on Puzzle Face this spring. It worked great for our students.
As Riley looked at the Image Key, she saw her face at the top. She didn't want anyone to know it was her so she used editing tools to black it out. I thought that was such a smart thing to do. She was ready to share and get everyone started on the Puzzle Face of the day. Since we will be assembling the puzzle code side up, we first sorted the pieces by color in the center of the table. There are 5 colors numbered 1-60.
We roughly organized them in rows by 10's. There was no need to put in numerical order, just in rows of 10's. It only took us a few minutes to organize them as we all worked together.
Note that there is no number 9. StickTogether did this because 6 and 9 were often confused. Instead of 9, there is a piece with an icon of a puzzle piece.
Once the pieces were organized, we started working on the Puzzle Face.
We assigned different sections of the Image Key to three groups of two as we worked.
When assembling the puzzle make sure you have placed the right piece in the right orientation. Both the shape of the color and the line under that shape is design to help you match the orientation.
If you can’t find a piece that you are looking for for your section, ask around to other players.
Hagan was awesome at finding mistakes and fixing them. That was part of the fun.
Once all 6 sections are assembled, attach them using the Image Key as a guide.
Then Heather flipped the image.
It is important to have someone hold up the Puzzle Face like Heather did with our kids.
And YES! It holds together perfectly.
It is important to have the group stand back, Puzzle Faces are best viewed from a distance - like magic, they actually pop into focus when you stand back.
They actually guessed the image was Riley right away.
It was so special to see how happy Riley was with her Puzzle Face.
And just remember, the 300 pieces inside this little box will create ANYONE'S face! You can do this over and over again with the same Puzzle Face. Our family had so much fun playing Puzzle Face together.
One of the BEST parts of Puzzle Face, they were already planning whose face was going to next as this is a game that can be played over and over again.
As we all completed our first Puzzle Face, we also shared it online. It would be so much fun if everyone did that too.
You can take a picture of your group with the finished Puzzle Face tagging @byStickTogether #PuzzleFace
Then take it apart and create a new Puzzle Face of another family member or friend.
Puzzle Face is definitely equal to unlimited fun! I can't wait to see all of the Puzzle Faces our family creates this year!
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