Cobble Hill - Nature Journal: Autumn 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

A naturalist's autumn journal, painted by Marjolein Bastin, with the studies spilling off the pages and over the edges. Loose watercolour on cream paper, and it is a considerably harder build than its gentleness suggests.

What you are looking at

Two open journal pages in the middle, one headed Autumn. On them: a coal tit on a weathered post, a cluster of fly agaric toadstools in red and white, a pale field mushroom, and on the facing page harvest mice climbing over green gourds and squash with yellow flowers, and a stoat standing upright among the leaves.

Around and over the pages, the season crowds in. A fox trotting along the top edge. A red squirrel with an apple in the centre left. Blackberries on the bramble, orange poppies on the right, blue and pink hydrangea heads bottom left, a great tit and two bluebirds at a nest box on the left, a magpie at the bottom, sloes and rose hips, a ladybird, a bee, a second squirrel top right, and a row of pumpkins and gourds along the bottom edge. Beech leaves in gold and copper scattered across the whole thing.

What it is like to build

The cream paper is the difficulty and it is everywhere. Between and behind every study is bare page, unpainted, with no tone, no texture and no drawing. On a normal puzzle that would be sky; here it is scattered through the whole picture rather than pooled in one place.

Build the journal pages first. Their edges are the only hard straight lines and they give you a rectangle in the middle to work outward from. Then take each study as its own small object, since every animal, fungus and flower is a different colour and shape. Save the bare paper for last and place it purely by shape, which is exactly where the random cut earns its keep.

Why the Cobble Hill cut is different

Cobble Hill are Canadian and cut a random cut: no grid, irregular shapes, no two alike. On several hundred pieces of blank cream paper that is the only remaining signal, and it is the difference between a satisfying finish and a tedious one. Linen print texture, poster included.

Specifications

A little context

Marjolein Bastin is a Dutch naturalist and illustrator whose nature journals have been in print for decades, and her work sits in the same tradition as the Edwardian Lady diaries: close observation, hand lettering, and species you can actually name. It finishes as something people frame, which is not true of most puzzles. Derived from multiple public data sources across retail, search and community platforms, refreshed 31 August 2026.

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