Easy Tips For Framing Puzzles

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Who else masked their quarantine anxiety and boredom in puzzle making? 🙋‍♀️At least I did early on. I was one of the people scrambling to find puzzles online when they were becoming hard to find, even on Amazon.

And I’m definitely not alone. Puzzle popularity has skyrocketed since the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine. According to CNBC, “One game maker has seen U.S. puzzle sales soar 370% year over year,” similar to the surge during the Great Depression.

But as sure as I was that I wanted to tackle that 1,000 piece masterpiece of the Hogwarts crest, I was equally as sure that I did not want to do it ever again.

That’s why I decided to frame it forever. It will make a great addition to my daughter’s Harry Potter-inspired decor.

But the process of framing a giant puzzle wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be and I would do things a bit differently next time.

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I’ll start by showing you what I did to frame this giant puzzle. Then I will explain why I suggest doing none of it. Well, almost none of it.

After toiling over this giant Harry Potter puzzle for more than a week… mostly by myself despite my daughter’s insistence that she would help… I set off to preserve it forever.

We are moving into a new house soon that actually has a cupboard under the stairs! This will be a perfect addition to the space that we plan to make into a reading nook for my daughter.

After doing a little research online, I bought some Mod Podge Puzzle Saver and a poster frame.

I painted the Mod Podge over the entire surface of the puzzle with a foam paintbrush.

You could see it in spots, especially in between some of the puzzle pieces where I had applied it rather thick. And you could see a light sheen over the whole puzzle if you looked really close.

Now, the hard part. After some struggle, I ended up sliding the paper insert that came with the poster frame underneath the whole puzzle. Then I put the plastic top from the poster frame over the top of the puzzle.

Then I very carefully flipped the puzzle over and placed it inside the poster frame, then added the frame backing to secure it.

The end product looks pretty good. But I can see a slight sheen from the Mod Podge, which bothers me a tiny bit. But I’ll get over it.

On the whole, I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

But this is what I would do differently next time:

Buy the poster frame before assembling the puzzle, and assemble the puzzle directly on top of the poster frame backing.
That way, after the puzzle is completely assembled, you can place the plastic top over it, then place the frame over that. And with it all assembled, then you can carefully flip it over to secure the frame.
This would skip the Mod Podge altogether if you want to avoid any sheen on the puzzle.
But you can still apply the Mod Podge if you want a little more security that the puzzle won’t fall apart while flipping it over.

I don’t know that I would ever attempt to hang a puzzle without a frame on it. If you wanted to attempt it, I think you would need a great deal of Mod Podge so none of the pieces would budge.

That would not have been a possibility with the one, light coat of Mod Podge I used on this puzzle, because after the application it was still pretty flexible.