Joe Average : Jigsaw Puzzle Art Mounting
...more than a puzzle!
Jigsaw puzzles are fun, diverting, and—when you’re in the “the zone”—oh so relaxing.
When the purchase of those puzzles also supports extremely worthy causes, we call that a win-win!
And we like being win-winners 😉
Joe Average
Brock David Tebbutt—better known as Joe Average—is a Canadian artist celebrated for his bright, colorful, and stylized take on people, animals, flowers, and insects.
The “One worldOne Hope” image used for the puzzle RainyDayMagazine received was commissioned and designed for the 11th international conference on AIDS.
“What I wanted to express in this image with the stained-glass feeling is that we are all fragile in the face of AIDS but working together with love (the heart in the center) is what we need to do,” said Average at the time.
Assembly Completed! Completely Assembled!
The 1,000-piece puzzle is done! But not without a bit of drama and waaaay more than the 6-to-10 hours stated on the side of the can! But we didn’t mind, we loved this puzzle. LOVED IT, I tell you.
And, instead of breaking it up like many other puzzles (boo!), we decided to frame it and hang it as the piece of art that it is.
We love you! You love us! And that’s the only way – for everything!
Prepping the Puzzle
Before the puzzle could be be hung, all its pieces had to be glued together. And wouldn’t you know it, the Joe Average folks had already thought of that, and included a tube of Puzzle Glue in the bucket, along with a “how-to” on, uh, how to glue the puzzle together.
Glue that thang up!
The basic steps were:
- Put down a mat to protect the work surface;
- Take the cap off the glue, apply the glue liberally to everywhere;
- Work the glue into the seams between the pieces; and
- Let dry overnight.
Fingers not required
How could we tell that was dry? We were able to move the entire puzzle without it falling apart!
The JoeAverage folks claimed that one tube of glue was enough for the 25×25″ piece, but we found that after complete application the puzzle still had some loose pieces…and we were out of glue. Read on to see how we resolved the problem 😉
“We await our final treatment with deep regard and love.” (Oh, your jigsaw puzzles don’t talk to you? Weird…)
Prepping the Frame
As luck would have it, someone local posted an ad on Facebook Marketplace for a frame with the exact dimensions (25″x25″ inside the mat) of the puzzle. How lucky was that???
Jarvis I’m sure this print of you is lovely, but we need you to move aside for the smoochy people, thanks.”
The original mounting job was clearly done by a professional, so we took extra care when we took it apart.
It was good we did that, as each layer we peeled off revealed more “work” for us 🙂
Unscrew these, slice off that, peel that off – this was mounted really, really well.
After taking off the paper backing, we expected to see a few tacks holding the work in place, but there were staples every inch or so locking things down…so yeah, it was a bit of a task getting the cardboard free 🙂
In professional mounting terms, this is called SUTW, or “Stapled up the Wazoo.”
Mounting the Puzzle
The puzzle glue did a fair job of holding all the pieces in place, but some of the pieces were not as secure as we would have liked, and we didn’t want to take any chances (refer to “waaaay more than the stated 6-10 hours on the side of the can,” above).
In a clever and environmentally appropriate move, we used the paper removed from the frame and glued that to the back of the puzzle with some Mod Podge.
This extra step made the eventual centering of the puzzle in the frame quite easy.
A little bit like kindergarten art class, but grownup.
Once everything was dry, we:
- cut off the excess paper,
- removed the mat from the frame,
- centered the work, and
- reassembled everything.
The finished piece looked amazing! We really liked the border and the larger overall size.
No longer a puzzle – its new life as framed wall art awaits!
We are calling this RDPC – RainyDayProject “completed!”
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