My daughter loves playing with puzzles. Ever since she was about 3 years old, we noticed that she could sit there for an hour working on puzzle sets that are way beyond her age. A year and a half later, that hasn’t changed. But here’s the problem: She doesn’t like doing the same puzzles over and over, so over the years, we’ve collected almost 100 different sets of puzzles, and the collection just keeps growing.

Recently, I came across a seller on Taobao who seemed to offer the perfect solution – something that combined her love for puzzles with her other love for drawing. Our home is filled with her colorful masterpieces, and wouldn’t it be great if I could turn her favorite ones into puzzles?

Here’s how it works. The process was incredibly simple:

1. Choose the size and number of pieces you want for your puzzle. The seller I chose offers puzzles between nine pieces and 1,000 pieces. The price ranges from RMB 5.2 for the nine-piece puzzle to RMB 79.9 for the 1,000-piece.
2. Once you’ve placed your order on Taobao, send them a message through the app and upload your artwork. You can take a picture of the artwork with your phone, but use a scanned copy if you want better results.

They’ll usually send you confirmation within the hour, and in a few days, you’ll receive your custom puzzle in the mail.

When the puzzle arrived, I wasn’t that impressed by the quality. The wooden puzzle did have a few pieces that didn’t cut all the way through, but for how little I paid, I was happy with what I got. But the best part was seeing my daughter’s reaction when she realized the puzzle was her own artwork!

She immediately wanted to put it together, and it was so much fun watching her piece together her own creation. Now, every time she finishes a new drawing she loves, she asks, “Can we make this one into a puzzle too?”

If you’re looking for a heartfelt and fun gift, I highly recommend trying this Taobao service. It’s affordable, easy to order, and brings so much joy to my little artist. Now, we have a growing collection of one-of-a-kind puzzles – each one a beautiful memory of her imagination at work.

Alternatively, if getting them printed isn’t what you’re looking for, Pinduoduo also sells completely blank puzzles that kids can draw on directly.

These come as a pack of ten puzzles for just RMB 15.

If you want more toy recommendations, join our Toy Reviews and Recommendations WeChat group.

Images: Taobao, Mina Yan

If you take the subway or the bus, you’ll probably find several people playing the 2048 game on their phones either iOS or androids. The simplicity of this game makes it a cross-generational favorite at the moment. The game was first released in March 2014 as a web version and developed over a weekend by 19-year-old Italian web developer Gabriele Cirulli. Cirulli later released the free app version for both iOS and Android in May 2014. This app has made it to the iTunes App Store featured list numerous times.

Features
This is mainly a mathematical puzzle game. This simple thing to do is join the tiles to get to 2048; this is easier said than done. The starting point is titles of twos this can prove to be problematic when playing this game if there is no strategy involved. The tiles move up or down left to right and vice versa. The more you add matching tiles together, the new tiles will increase in value moving from twos to fours to eights till 2048.

There is a progressive challenge section, which sets a number of moves to make in order to compile the stated number before moving on to the next number. The compilation of tiles has to be done within a set number of moves. The option available is to go back to figuring out ways to get to 2048.

The app is in several languages English, French, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish. You can remove the ads within the app if it’s too distracting but for a fee and can be restored in the menu section (why someone would want to do that is beyond me). There is the option of sharing the information the scores via sms, mail, twitter or air drop.

Drawbacks
The graphics on this app are ordinary, in short nothing fancy and quite bland. This is done intentionally to make sure that the focus is on the objective to get the tiles to 2048.

Ages: 5+
Category: Games
Platform: universal
Language: English, French, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish
Price: Free with In-App purchases- USD 1.99 to unlock the no ads version

Photos: appannie.com