A new puzzle company: Brown Owl puzzles

Jason Tanner and his wife Allison, from Ottawa Canada,  have just launched Bone Owl Puzzles aiming to make jigsaw puzzles from artists work.  They are starting initially with five unique designs.

Tanner said he and his wife have always enjoyed puzzles and noticed an upsurge in interest recently.

“There are very few jigsaw puzzle companies out there that actually take an art-first kind of approach,” he said.

He said the standard in the industry is to use stock images and pay artists only a small percentage for their work and they wanted to do something different.

“Most jigsaw puzzle companies use repurposed art from big multimedia companies,” he said. “We’re paying artists upfront for their time and effort.”

Tanner is getting the business off the ground with a $10,000 drive on Kickstarter. He said this will give them the funding they needed to do an additional run with five artists.

“Kickstarter is an excellent place to launch creative projects. It introduces it to a lot of people who may not have heard about it.”

He said they have to do a large run off the bat, which is also what makes the Kickstarter campaign important.

The artists for the puzzles were given only a modicum of direction, because they wanted unconventional designs on the puzzles.

“We provided the requirements for what makes a good jigsaw puzzle and they basically ran with it,” he said, adding you need lots of detail in a puzzle and no big open spaces.

He said all of the artists they approached jumped right on board the project, because this is something they wanted to do and in many cases didn’t know how.  

We wish Jason and his wife well in their new venture.

Jason and Allison Tanner

Bone Owl Puzzle