Once again, we chose to participate in the Oak Hills High School Fall Craft Show – 2022. This show features up to 50 sellers and between 2000 and 3000 visitors. It has been met with growing interest year after year, with proceeds from the show going to support the high school band. It’s success from a community perspective is a true compliment to the commitments of time and energy donated by those who are responsible for the event.

In this show, we made the decision to focus exclusively on our personalized wooden jig saw puzzles and the accessories that can accompany them. From a capacity perspective, we estimated that we could accept 7-10 new customer puzzle projects and have them completed and delivered before Christmas. Our space was received very well by those attending the show. We actually accepted 15 puzzle projects for the Christmas deadline and, sadly, had to turn away a few late comers that were interested in getting one before Christmas.

Several customers included puzzle accessories with their project order. Our accessory choices include: “build and display” frames; tabletop “display” easels; and “piece storage” boxes. We were excited about this as this show was our first offering for these items. As seen at the show, our accessories are made from customer choices in American hardwood species. Available choices are: hard maple; cherry; walnut; and red oak. Most popular was the cherry piece storage box made with cherry corner splines and a hard maple box lid insert.

Also new and seen for the first time at this show was our “historic local news collage”. With this one, we wanted to show an example of our puzzle collage option, with a slight twist. Normally, our collage puzzles are made from a grouping of images provided by the customer. With the collage offering, these images are graphically cut, cropped and assembled into a single poster from which the puzzle is made. With the “historic local news collage”, the customer simply chooses a date in history. We then locate one or more local newspapers from that date and then excerpt a variety of content from the papers. This often includes: the headline; local news and editorials; local sports stories; local weather report; entertainment news; comic strip and/or political satire; retail ads; help wanted ads; home sale ads; auto sale ads; and anything else that gets our attention as we browse through the papers. We have found that people are interested in getting the result as a puzzle. We also find people like the “historic local news collage” as a wall hanging that can optionally be framed.

Our space offered visitors the chance to experience building any one of several puzzles that we made specifically for the event. Kids and adults alike enjoyed the chance to see how our pieces look and feel and to enjoy the assembly experience.

Thanks to everyone who visited our space at the OHHS show and special thanks to those that ordered a puzzle project for their Christmas holiday! We hope to see you again next year.