To make a puzzle based on a drawn picture, you will need:
- scissors;
- paper;
- glue;
- ruler;
- pencils;
- thick cardboard.

Draw any picture on a piece of paper. Also, do not forget to make a photocopy - you can use it as a guide when making the mosaic.

Stick the picture onto thick cardboard, then leave it to dry completely. Then flip the image right-side down.
Using a ruler, sketch out the grid, which should consist of shapes of various sizes. Use a stationery knife or scissors to cut the puzzle along the lines.

Your puzzle game is ready. Mix the pieces together and enjoy assembling them.

How to make a jigsaw puzzle based on a photo

There are also more complex ways of making a homemade puzzle, which can serve, for example, as an original gift for a friend. To do this, you will need:
- color printer on which you can have a high-quality A4 photo;
- thick cardboard that will fit your printed photo;
- PVA glue;
- scissors;
- pencil.

If you want to make a fairly large puzzle, it is worth contacting special studios that print large-format photos for printing photos.

So, stick the printed photo to the cardboard and wait for your product to dry completely. Then trim the excess cardboard so that the edges of the photo are exactly aligned with the edges of the cardboard and have the same shape.

After that, on the back of the cardboard, using a regular pencil, draw the markings along which you will need to cut out the pieces of the puzzle. If you are making a puzzle for adults, try to make the puzzle pieces more complex than simple geometric shapes. Use not only straight lines, but also semicircles and geometric shapes at various angles. This will make the process of assembling a homemade puzzle as difficult as possible.

In printing houses, there are special machines that will allow you to cut your photo in different ways. This option may come in handy in case you are in a hurry with a gift or you are too lazy to wield scissors, but you still want to give an original gift. When the pieces of the puzzle are cut, try to assemble them yourself into the original picture. When doing this, make sure they fit well enough together.

How to make a jigsaw puzzle for a kid

To make a soft puzzle for a small child, you will need:
- several sheets of multi-colored porous rubber;
- scissors;
- household cellulose napkins.

Cut out any figurines that your child will know from rubber sheets and stick them on a cellulose napkin. After that, using scissors, cut the resulting figures into 2-3 pieces.

For kids who have not yet fully acquired the skills of folding puzzles, it is best to cut the picture into 2 equal parts. After a while, when the baby can easily put the picture together, you can cut each piece of the puzzle game into 2 more parts.

Alternatively, you can use a bright page from an old illustrated magazine to make a puzzle, glue it onto cardboard, and cut it into squares, triangles, or other geometric shapes. Even if there is no cardboard at hand - it doesn't matter! Use the easiest way to make a jigsaw puzzle for a child - take an old and resilient postcard with color illustrations and cut it into pieces.

It is recommended that parents put puzzles in a bag or envelope so that they do not look for them all over the room later. In this way, you can create a variety of puzzles for your child, allowing him to develop fine motor skills and thinking.

I was asked to make a simple wooden puzzle Piggy.

I usually draw a pattern on my computer and then print it on paper, easily resizing the image depending on the size of the blank. This time I found myself without a printer, so I drew directly on the cut of a birch board. Workpiece thickness about 18 mm. For cutting with a hand jigsaw, this is a lot, but for a jigsaw (pictured) just right. The version of the homemade machine tool was shown in October in this thread

The next step is drilling the holes - the eyes. It is best to do this before cutting, as small parts can be easily split with a drill.

Then sawing. I use German Flying Dutchman files. Saws come in a variety of shapes and thicknesses. I like the FD-UR files (ultra reverse) more. They are very sharp, retain this edge well during work and give a clean cut, which often requires almost no further grinding. Exception - when sawing along the fibers, there are shreds, as in this photo on the abdomen of a pig.
The thickness of the file may vary. I choose depending on the thickness of the parts and further finishing. It is better to cut thick workpieces with thick files, since with a small gap, the parts are then poorly disassembled and assembled.
Also, further painting and varnishing requires thicker files, since the paint layer also has a thickness.

At the end of cutting, all parts are sanded. And my customer will paint.

Puzzles for toddlers is a very exciting educational game. When collecting puzzles, the child learns to analyze, compare, combine parts into a whole. On our website, we invite you to make puzzles for children with your own hands. To do this, you do not need to spend a lot of time, effort, and it will save a lot of money.

In this section we offer colorful puzzles for children 3, 4, 5 years old from 24 parts.

Free printable colorful puzzles for kids

Free printable colorful puzzles for kids

How to make puzzles with your own hands

To make puzzles with your own hands, you need to download the archive, select a file with puzzles, print, glue on cardboard, tape over with tape and cut the picture into small pieces along the lines.

If the child is good at scissors, then let him cut the puzzles himself. Even if he cuts not very evenly, the picture will still form well.

If your kid loves to do applications, then you can invite him to glue the pieces of the puzzle on a sheet of paper to get a whole picture. Then the sheet with the image does not need to be glued to the cardboard, but simply cut into small pieces and let the child glue them together.

The process of making puzzles for children with their own hands is shown in the photo. Good luck to you!

We print files with puzzles

We glue the sheets onto cardboard and glue them on top with adhesive tape

Starting to cut out the puzzle pieces

Colorful puzzles for kids

Colorful puzzles for kids

Colorful puzzles for kids

Colorful puzzles for kids

Colorful puzzles for kids

As we prepare, we will post new developmental material, follow our publications.

The site contains more puzzles for children of all ages:

1. For very young children
2. Puzzles based on folk tales
3. Large puzzles for children 2, 3, 4 years old
4. For children 2, 3, 4, 5 years old puzzles from

How are plywood puzzles created? Today, many of you have seen many sculptures created with intersecting ribs on the Internet. In our humble opinion, the Japanese company d-torso has succeeded most in this matter. We will tell you how such masterpieces are created in this article.

There are several ways. The first and the simplest is the creation of drawings using special software. From the programs we know, this is Autodesk 123d make: load a 3D model, set the parameters of the sections and at the output you get a layout in vector format. The disadvantages of Autodesk 123d make are the section in only two selected planes (this is normal, as otherwise the algorithm will not work) and the problem with loading many 3D models. The program is still raw and the last update was from 2014. There is also a plugin for the SketchUp program, which we will talk about further, and it is called Slice modeler. A common disadvantage of such programs is manual modification of models and throwing away a huge amount of unnecessary parts. It may take the same time as the third method, which will be discussed later.

The second way is to create vector drawings in a graphical editor with the calculation of sections in different planes. For this method, you must have at least minimal artist skills and good spatial thinking. The contour can be drawn in the same CorelDraw. Right there and cut with planes. Those who studied engineering graphics well at the university will immediately catch it. We do not see the disadvantages of this method, with experience, such models can be made quite quickly. Plus, there is a creative component. An insignificant disadvantage is the impossibility to see the 3D model in isometric view already assembled without preliminary cutting.

The third way is to create a puzzle from the original 3D model “by hand”. This method combines the advantages of the previous two. You can decide for yourself where to divide the model by planes, how far the element outline will go into the model. The general picture is immediately visible when creating planes. The disadvantages of this method are the mandatory presence of a 3D model, as for the first option. We will tell you exactly about this method using the example of making an elephant's head.

The main manufacturing process is working with SketchUp. Moreover, there is a free version of this product (although you can simulate in a similar way in almost any program for creating three-dimensional graphics). Find the 3D model you want to make a jigsaw puzzle and load it into SketchUp.

... we copy with a certain step in the desired direction.

The next stage is the intersection of the model with planes. It is necessary to carry out such operations with parallel planes or with planes that do not intersect mutually. It is imperative to create an anchor point before that in order to correctly group elements from different planes in the future.

Select the planes and use the Intersect Faces command to intersect the model in the right place.

After executing the command, which can take quite a long time depending on the PC, you can see the outline at the intersection of the plane with the model.

After that, delete the model along with the section planes and you should have the contours of the future puzzle elements. Be sure to first copy the model along with the reference point for subsequent sectioning with other planes.

We now have a set of closed paths that form the future pieces of the puzzle. In order for the sections to be formed, we close each of the contours with a line.

Some contours may lose lines after deleting the model and clipping planes. In this case, you need to manually close them. All of this, of course, depends on the original model.

It remains to remove small "garbage" and the final picture will look like ...

The next stage is similar to the previous one. Let's just slice the model along the other axis. If the first axis was conventionally X, then now we take Y.

Subsequent operations are repeated.

Don't forget about the anchor point. The bottom photo shows the overlap of sections from different planes when using the anchor point.

Let's cut our future model and remove unnecessary elements.

As you can see, the lower sections of the trunk hang in the air. Let's make a section between the two previous ones and “tie” the trunk elements into a solid structure.

It remains to add sections along the Z axis. The whole process is familiar to you.

Later it turned out that on the Z axis, two sections would be enough and the middle ones were thrown out. Added tusks and scaled ears in Corel. With Corel, the vectors were imported into SketchUp and docked with our elements.

Next, use the Push / Pull command to add volume to the sections. We pull on the thickness of the future material. If you plan to cut it out of 4mm plywood, then pull it accordingly. We advise you to make the entire model at once in real scale to represent the overall picture in the future.

Final 3D model

The creation of grooves for joining the puzzle elements is done manually and it is a rather long and monotonous process compared to the previous process. Anyone familiar with SketchUp will do it without any problems. Let us show this operation using the example of two parts of the trunk. An important point: in the process of creating elements, even at the stage of creating sections, be sure to group each element separately.

Select one of the elements and go into editing mode. Draw the outline of the intersection of our elements.

For convenience, use the Hide command to hide the “unnecessary” element and close the groove contour.

Using the Push / Pull command, extrude a groove in the element.

We carry out a similar operation with another puzzle element.

Creation of grooves can be done faster using the same Intersect Faces command, but you still have to modify it manually. Next, we carry out similar operations with the rest of the puzzle pieces. And in the end, we lay out all the elements on one plane for subsequent export to CorelDraw.

Let's clarify right away that exporting 2D graphics from SketchUp is still poorly implemented and some files can only be exported using installed plugins. The most suitable file format for export is dxf. You can try both dwg and eps. In general, any format will do for achieving the goal. When exporting sections, be sure to make sure that they lie in the same plane and that you have selected the appropriate camera (view) mode. The camera (view) must look strictly perpendicular to the elements. Otherwise, unnecessary curves will be exported.

Actually, at this stage, the creation of a model for vector cutting of a 3D puzzle is completed. Further, directly the manufacture of the puzzle on any CNC cutting machine or manually using patterns. We also promised to tell you about the SketchUp plugin “Slice modeler”. This plugin allows you to do the above work automatically, but as with any automation process, there are drawbacks. Slice modeler works great with simple 3-D shapes as well as simple 3D models. It worked awkwardly with all the models we imported into SketchUp.

When the plug-in starts, it throws out a window in which we select the section step, direction along the axis, thickness of the finite element, color and layer. For example, we will choose the X axis. The plugin provides information about the number of sections and performs the actual process itself.

After some time, it issues ready-made sections of the model and requests information about another axis. For example, the Z axis is selected.

The result of the plugin's work with this model is not very good, since many sections need to be edited and brought to mind. During normal operation, the Slice modeler at the end of the process scatters the puzzle elements in one plane, and also makes the numbering of each part. This plug-in cuts in two planes, the sections in the third plane must be completed manually or done in a clever way - to perform the process in pairs in two planes, and then superimpose them (for example, XY and XZ). The bottom line is this: Slice modeler can be used with simple 3D models or with models made at a high level (example). This process may take even longer than manual nesting.

Now we turn directly to the process of manufacturing our parts. We will cut the elements of the puzzle on this handsome man.

Desktop laser engraver A3 + SPLIT. This is the second generation A3 + SPLIT. The size of the working field is 300x450, the real engraving speed is 550 mm / s. Cutting 4mm plywood at a speed of 12-15mm / s. After suffering with the K-40 engraver, working on this machine is a pleasure. Made in our Ukraine, the guys always have components and support at a high level. By the way, there is a complete set with a "pin" table. Those who have worked with plywood in large quantities know all the "charms" of washing the edges of a knife table from soot.

The actual work process boils down to installing plywood on the desktop and launching the contour cutting program, which is tightly integrated with CorelDraw.

In total, the entire model took five sheets with dimensions of 300 x 500 mm. This is even taking into account the base of the shield, which was completed already in CorelDraw. Be sure to check the thickness of the plywood before cutting and adjust the actual drawings taking into account the laser cut thickness of 0.1 mm.

The dimensions of the finished model were 50x50x40 cm.

And finally, the finished result.

In total, this work took one full-time working day. Of course, for beginners, this time may be a little long, but with experience the automation of the process will come. We would like to emphasize that this method of making such products is not the only one, and if there is a desire and time, then go for it.

No animals were harmed during the making of the 3D puzzle.