I was able to work on the puzzle for a couple of hours last night which was great.  In that time, I was able to knock out the borders (top and bottom) and start on the tiger. 

The first two pieces of Section 2 are officially “married”.

Here’s a picture of all the border pieces laid out and separated by whether they were a top or a bottom border piece.

I was initially missing two of the top border pieces, but luckily they were easily identifiable in that they had balloons on them so they were pretty easy to find in my hot air balloon bucket.  It only took about 10 minutes to remove them from their hiding place.  :o)

I am trying the method that Scott Slater and his wife, PJ, used when they put together their Life puzzle.  They built each section on top of the previous.  I am still unsure how this is going to be for my eyes when I get more of the actual puzzle on the board, but for now it is okay.  I have placed the top and bottom borders on top of Section 1 and it doesn’t look too bad…see pictures below.

So, so far so good when it comes to my eyes, but we’ll see how it goes moving forward.

Here are a couple of pictures of the tiger just starting to come together.  I have part of his tail and his face done, but by the time I got to start on him last night, I was already pretty tired so I didn’t make a lot of progress.  As you can see in the second picture, on the yellow foam board, I have laid out all the tiger pieces by their shape and the orientation in which they go into the puzzle.  This is an amazing time saver when it comes to fitting pieces together; although, it does take a while to lay all the pieces out like this.  In the end though it’s worth the extra time.