About Us
Hi! Thank you for being here. It means a lot. We're the Sweenraldobar family.
Luis is originally from Medellín, Colombia and has a degree in 3D Animation, but his passion has always been drawing. He is the artist aka Creative Department behind Mr. Sloth Studios and loves being creative. He uses Procreate, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Fresco.
Emily is originally from New Jersey and has a degree in business and a masters in international education. She works from home full time in educational travel/study abroad and helps run the Operations for Mr. Sloth Studios.
Maya is almost 6 years old and consults for both the Creative and Operations Departments at Mr. Sloth Studios. She also helps out in the Shipping Department.
Mr. Sloth, the namesake of our studio, is Maya's first and most favorite stuffed animal who goes everywhere with her. He has traveled to 46 states and 6 countries already, a very well traveled sloth!
Mr. Sloth
Our Story
(for TL;DR version scroll to the bottom)
In 2020 during the pandemic we bought a used cargo van and built it out to live and travel in full time as a family. We like to say that we attended YouTube University to learn all of the skills needed to build our van. We really had no idea what we were doing and had to learn everything from woodworking and plumbing to solar/electricity and window + fan installation. It took us 8 months and a lot of literal blood, sweat, and tears to turn our dream into a reality with a toddler in tow. Everything was trial and error and it was overwhelming and daunting most of the time, but we were determined and it helped us learn that everything is "figureoutable".
We donated, sold, and got rid of most of our stuff and finally set out on our adventure in March of 2021. We love the outdoors and visit lots of National and State Parks, Forests, Seashores and Lakeshores. We've had the opportunity to visit 46 U.S. States in the van and we've lost count of how many National Parks and Monuments, but it's probably more than 50 and counting!
Fast forward to Spring of 2023 when our van broke down in Monument Valley, Arizona. We'll tell you that story over coffee or a drink around the campfire, but it was a doozy!
We found ourselves flying back across the country to our home town area without our tiny home on wheels. We had poured all of our time, energy, and money into building out the van 3 years earlier and now we were down in the dumps and feeling anxious about the future. We did not know the extent of the damage to our van or how long the repairs would take. It was a lot of big scary unknowns and those few months were rough for us.
The van finally got fixed after almost 3 months of being in limbo, but the silver lining during that period in addition to all of the love and support we received from family and friends, is that it forced us to find ways to take our minds off of our van troubles. We were tethered to one place for a few months and so we had a lot of time on our hands to think and dream.
We did a lot of puzzles as a family prior to our van break down, but during that time we got into doing jigsaw puzzles even more. It became the best way to spend time together as a family and de-stress.
We enjoy all kinds of puzzles, but always come back to mini puzzles. They hold a special place in our hearts because they are fun to do and offer just the right amount of puzzle satisfaction, are great for travel, good for our brains, and easy to store (especially important when you live in a van!).
Feeling uninspired by the lack of variety, designs, and quality of mini puzzles on the market, a random comment of “I wish we could just make our own puzzles” spoken into the universe sparked a little dream. Luis started sketching and coming up with ideas and soon the dream of having our own design studio started to take shape.
It took us about 20 months of diligently working in our spare time towards this little dream to open our own design studio and launch our first collection of mini puzzles. Definitely less blood, sweat, and tears than van building, but it still took a lot of time, energy, determination, and figuring stuff out to get us to this point.
Luis has always enjoyed drawing with pencil and paper so first he had to buy an iPad to learn how to take his old fashioned skills into the digital world and also teach himself the program Procreate. He had a lot of different ideas for designs and went back to the drawing board many times over the course of a year.
Once we finally had a working concept, we had to find, vet, and choose a supplier, get the artwork ready for printing, design the packaging, file the paperwork to create a small business, open a business bank account, get a die cut mold made, order samples, design our website and social media, and get ready to launch. It's been a long, but rewarding learning process for us and we are truly excited about making this dream come true.
We hope you enjoy the mini puzzles - the designs, the puzzle quality, the packaging, the puzzle satisfaction with sturdy pieces, and the amount of dedication and love that went into making them. Even if you don't consider yourself a puzzler, we think you will enjoy them!
TL;DR
We live and travel in our self-converted camper van. We love nature and doing puzzles together, especially mini puzzles. We wanted to make our own, Luis is an artist, and here we are!
Happy Puzzling!