First venture into the realm of puzzles! And it was all done while my daughter was napping!
I'll start at the beginning. My daughter is almost 2, and she was starting to try to spell her own name. She had most of the letters, but had difficulty with the sequence, and omitting letters sometimes. My wife wanted me to look at possibly making her a name puzzle to give her visual confirmation for learning her name.
I did this little project on Christmas Eve. Olivia already had the baby doll crib to open on Christmas (post upcoming), but I felt like she needed one more custom gift from her DaDa. As she went down for her nap, I already had the letters mapped out on a piece of 3/4" common board, so it was time to get started!
I cut out the letters fro the 3/4" board using my scroll saw. After they were cut out, I laid them out along another piece of common board (which would be the puzzle board). I lightly spray painted over the letters to transfer the pattern to the puzzle board.
I used my router to rout the letters out of the puzzle board. I did about 1/4" routing while constantly test-fitting the puzzle pieces along the way. Once I was certain that they all fit, I sanded down both the letters and the puzzle board. Acrylic paints were used on the letters. Since Olivia likes rainbow, it was a no brainer to use ROY G BIV! The puzzle board was left natural wood, per my wife's request. I finished it off with a thick coat of poly to protect it from my daughter and any incidental damage.
As I finished, I checked the time, and it had been only 2.5 hours! My daughter was waking up from her nap, so my wife quickly wrapped it and put it under the tree for her to open on Christmas!
She really loved the puzzle, but didn't really keep her attention sustained for longer than a couple minutes at a time. Oh well! When she gets more serious about learning her name, I bet she'll figure it out!
-Kevin
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