Storm Horse Wooden Puzzle
A rearing horse whose mane and tail spiral into the storm – 250 painterly pieces
Specifications
| Material | Wood |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 28 × 28 cm |
| Thickness | 4 mm |
| Pieces | 250 |
| Difficulty | Medium, Hard |
| Recommended age | 14+ |
| Made in | Poland |
Shipping
Every order ships from our fulfilment centre in France – never dropshipping. Orders are dispatched within 24 hours on working days; order before 10:30 and it leaves the same day. You’ll receive your tracking number by email at dispatch.
France: 2–4 working days – free home delivery from €40.
Rest of Europe: 2–10 working days, depending on destination.
Returns
You have 14 days from delivery to change your mind – no reason needed. Write to us first at info@creatifwood.com, then send the product back unused, in its original packaging.
Return shipping is at your charge; we refund the full order amount within 14 days, to your original payment method.
Received a damaged or wrong item? Contact us within 14 days with photos – we’ll make it right.
About this product
A horse dissolving into the storm behind it
The animal rears at the centre of the disc, dark head turned left, one foreleg raised. Everything else on the board is weather: a mane and tail that spiral outward in ochre, rust, indigo and slate until they reach the rim, and behind them a sky of banded cloud over low gold and violet hills.
The rendering is painterly rather than ornamental. Colours blend into one another through swirls and eddies instead of sitting in outlined shapes, and there is barely a hard line anywhere except along the horse's head and neck.
Where the animal stops
The boundary between the horse and the storm is deliberately unclear. Strands of mane become cloud, and cloud curls back into mane, so you cannot say precisely where the tail ends and the sky begins. Only the head, the dark chest and the raised foreleg are unambiguously the animal.
What people do with it
This one gets built inward from the rim, which is the reverse of how most people work. The horse's dark head is the obvious landmark, but it occupies a small part of the board and connects to almost nothing that can be identified in isolation. The banded sky on the left, by contrast, sorts easily by colour, so builders tend to lay in the hills and the cloud bands first and let the spirals close towards the centre last.
Pieces from the mane get set aside and returned to repeatedly, because a swirl that looks placeable often turns out to belong three positions further round.
Why this is the harder of our two horses
Our Fiery Horse gives you a mane of parallel bands: the difficulty there is telling one band from another, but each piece at least belongs to a band. Here nothing is parallel and nothing repeats. The swirls rotate, overlap and change scale, colours shade continuously, and a piece can be turned four ways and look plausible in all of them.
It is also among the largest piece counts in the collection.
What the horse stands for
The horse is documented across Indo-European traditions as an emblem of speed, nobility and passage, and this treatment leans hard on the first of those. A rearing pose, a mane pulled backwards by movement, and a landscape that appears to be moving with it.
Afterwards
A clean circle with no projections, so it hangs flat and reads as a plate rather than as a cut-out shape. The palette is warm and muted, closer to a painting than to the high-contrast designs elsewhere in this collection, and it holds up next to wood and earth tones where the brighter boards would not.
Our craftsmanship
Made by our family, piece by piece
Every creatifwood puzzle starts as a sheet of birch plywood in our family workshop. We laser-cut every piece into its own shape – no two are alike – check each set by hand, and pack it in a gift-ready box. No production lines, no shortcuts – just a small family that loves working with wood, and takes it personally that your puzzle brings people together around the table.
Meet the family behind your puzzleFrequently asked questions
Is a round puzzle easier than an animal-shaped one?
The outer edge is a clean circle – on some designs with a decorative fringe around it, like the Dragon's flames – so unlike our silhouette designs you do have a border to build first. The difficulty moves elsewhere: the artwork is painted rather than patterned, with soft gradients and deep backgrounds instead of flat ornament, so there are fewer hard lines to sort by.
What are the animal-shaped pieces for?
They are called whimsy pieces, a tradition that goes back to Victorian puzzle cutters who added recognisable shapes on a whim while working. Parker Brothers made it a standard in 1908. They do not interlock the way ordinary pieces do, so the pieces around them hold them in place.
Is this harder than a cardboard puzzle of the same size?
Usually yes. The piece shapes are irregular rather than a uniform grid, several pieces are cut as figures, and the painted backgrounds shade gradually rather than breaking into distinct colour blocks.
How long will it take?
Honestly: longer than you expect. The border helps you start, but the painted artwork shades gradually instead of breaking into blocks, and the irregular pieces keep you guessing. We think that is part of the pleasure – it is made to be savoured, not raced.
Can I glue it and hang it on the wall?
Yes. Use a glue made for puzzles rather than a general craft adhesive: it runs into the joints and dries as a thin clear film that protects the face. We stock the Cléo'Puzzle glue-varnish, rated for cardboard, wood and MDF, with a precision nozzle for boards that have no straight edges. Work in thin coats and let each one dry. Gluing is permanent – if you would rather rebuild the puzzle one day, or keep the front matt, dry adhesive film on the back is the alternative. Once sealed, the board can be framed or hung as it is.
Why does it smell of wood when I open the box?
Laser cutting leaves a light trace of scorching on the edges. We clean the pieces before packing, but a faint smell of cut wood in the first days is normal and fades.
Which age is it suitable for?
It is shown on each product page under Specifications. The designs in this range are marked 14+.
What if a piece is missing or broken?
Write to us with a photo and we will send a replacement. Details are on our Missing Pieces page.