I'm on a Mission

My dear Mom is turning 90 in two weeks time.  She loves doing jigsaw puzzles to keep herself busy and I managed to find large format 250 piece puzzles by Emporium.  Three months ago she had a haemorrhage in the back of her right eye and now her eyesight has got too bad to do these puzzles.  She keeps on asking me if I can't get puzzles which have less pieces but I just can't find any these days which are not for children.

I haven't been able to think of a good present that I can buy her.  At her age there's not much that she wants.  So I suddenly thought, that's it, I am going to make her a puzzle for her birthday!  I have a Cricut cutting machine which cuts cardboard and I know how to make the shapes.  So I rushed out and bought a large 100 piece children's puzzle as a guide.  I put it together, turned it over and marked the edges with a thick black pen.  I then divided it up into four sections and scanned each section in (bottom right here) and then merged them all.  I then erased the pink background with the background eraser tool.

I know that because of the thick, rough lines it will not import properly into the Cricut software so I intend to pull the image into Inkscape and draw it from scratch.  It will be a good learning experience for me and although I know it will take me a while, once I have it, I can cut any number of puzzles, any size from A3 downwards!  I can keep Mom happy for ages!

So this is the picture I want to make into my first puzzle.  I will put Happy 90th on the balloon.  This is my family on a ship many moons ago - I'm the little girl on the left.  The well-worn rag dolls were made by my Mom.

I do so hope I can make this work.  If I do, I intend to upload the Cricut file onto the internet so others can use it!