Making a Puzzle Piece for a Puzzle Missing One

I mentioned on a post a few weeks ago that when we were missing a piece in a puzzle, I used a piece from another puzzle with a similar color and cut it into the shape of the missing piece of the current puzzle. 

I mentioned in a post that we were going to do this flag puzzle that I did as a teenager with my family. (See that here.)I was sad when we finally finished it that there were lots of pieces missing. Princess Five hated the puzzle as most of it is the same and she refused to help me with it but Princess Four did lots of the flag and some of the sky. 


It was funny as we were almost finished, Princess Five sat down and started helping and both Princess Four and I commented about how she wouldn't help until it was almost done with maybe 20 pieces left. We made her feel sad and had to say sorry and I told her that any time I get to sit and visit with her, I am happy so I would love her to help at any point along the way when we are doing puzzles or anything else for that matter.
 
I ended up throwing the flag puzzle out since it was missing so many pieces. I couldn't see why anyone would keep puzzles that are missing pieces unless they hold some emotional value or in the case of the girls, they are part of their "collection."  
 
I have purchased about 6 puzzles over the past few weeks and we have really enjoyed doing them in the evenings after working on things during the days. 

It takes me back to when I would do them with my siblings while watching M A S H after the evening news in the summer. 
 
I found this fun old puzzle last week originally $.99 from Grand Central. Now my age is showing as I remember that being a store and not just a train station. We put it together and I loved how thick the pieces are. It is like the old time lithographs with the little dots you can see on the picture. The colors are muted and the puzzle is actually smaller than the picture so we kept getting confused as to where things went.
 
We get it finished and it is missing two pieces. I really liked the puzzle and the art and sentiment behind the puzzle. I thought it funny that he is smoking a pipe in the forest. I thought it funny that he is holding a baby deer but has a gun. Did he shoot the Doe? 


I laugh that he is wearing a shirt and tie in the woods eating beans out of a can but has a tin like he is going to feed it to the deer. It is all funny to me. I wanted to keep the puzzle more as a decoration and piece of art than for the puzzle aspect and loved that some of the pieces are in the shape of animals and are funny shaped. With that, I used a cereal box to make the missing pieces. 

I put the box under the puzzle and used a pencil to trace the shape of the piece onto the cereal box. Since the pieces are so thick, I actually did six or seven of the same piece and cut them all out and then glued them together using a glue stick. 

I used a pencil to color the pattern on the black and white dogs face.

I did the same thing with the other spot that was missing a piece. It was a darker area and so I just colored it in with a black sharpie which actually made it a bit too black.

I wish I had actually used a dark brown to color it in and maybe mixed it with a grey or blue but I will share something about making the piece to fit. 

On one piece, I traced it inside the puzzle like I shared and then used that piece, once cut out, and traced around it for the other same pieces to glue together. 

The problem with that was that it made the traced piece bigger than the original piece and I ended up having to trim all those pieces more so I would just use the empty space where the piece is missing and trace it like I shared up above. This give the piece more of a fit. 


There are razors or blades that would cut it a little better than scissors but I was lazy and just used scissors to cut out the pieces. 

It would have been smarter to do a thick piece of cardboard rather than so many thin cereal box layers but that gave the option to make it as thick as the puzzle as I could add another layer as needed. 


I left the puzzle piece of the dog natural in color but thought about using white colored pencils or crayons to shade it better. You can see it matches fairly well but the darker piece, I made way too dark. 

I shared how I wanted to keep the puzzle and really, the time it took to make the pieces wasn't really justified other than I wanted to see if I could make it work. I think one did and the other not so much but it was fun trying....