From now until 3 PM PST on Tuesday, January 31st, every purchase of $9.95 or more will earn you a free Ice Box! Featuring the seasonal color Ice Blue, the Ice Box has a wide array of awesome prizes inside: Ice Blue Penguins, Ice Blue War Brigs and Sloops, Ice Blue Chromas, and even Ice Blue/White Parrots!

Be the coolest rogue on the island by sinking your hook into an Ice Box right now! For a full list of available prizes and other more detailed info, the official rules can be found here.

Good luck, everyone!

This week on Portrait Day: a festive array of backgrounds perfect for Chinese New Year! The full list is as follows...

• Cayenne's New Year's Festivity Garden
• Charavie's Dragon Celebration
• Charavie's Crocodragon Party
• Greylady's Chinese New Year
• Inghild's Year of the Dragon
• Velternal's Dragon Dance At Dusk

There's a new background for every size group, so round up your hearties and head over to your nearest portrait easel today! These backgrounds will only be around until Wednesday, February 1st at 3 PM PST, so don't dawdle: start your New Year celebrations now!

One final programming note: this is the last Portrait Day! From now on, new player-created backgrounds will be released alongside other seasonal stuff, like Limited Edition ships or other goodies. Thanks for following Portrait Day, and keep your eyes on the blog and the Pirate News for future portrait background info!

Happy Portrait Day, everyone!

January's Limited Edition ship is sure to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies this year: it's the Dragon Class Fanchuan!

Here's the ship's quarterdeck. Note the deep scale-green hue of the deck planks, and the tail extending out the back! Of course, if the ship has a tail attached to the stern, it only makes sense that...

...there be a fearsome dragon head on the bow! No one would dare mess with a ship with such a ferocious figurehead.

There's plenty of other surprises throughout the ship, as well. Check out these opulent jade dragon statues in the hold!

The Dragon Class Fanchuan is only available until 3 PM PST on Wednesday, February 1st. Grab yours and roar across the seas in glorious draconic majesty!

Like a flash of winter frost - it's the very briefest of Portrait Days!

In celebration of the nip in the air at the beginning of this shiny New Year, we've turned on a few of our favorite winter-themed backgrounds from previous years. They'll only be around until next Portrait Day, Tuesday, January 17th, so go take a look at your nearest portrait easel today and see if there's a frosty one for you!

Happy Portrait Day, everyone!

Velasco Thorsson, that haughty yet brave explorer, has made it through the icy maelstrom to discover a direct passage from his ocean to yers! Alas, dead in the wintry waters he is, unless he can get enough supplies to sail home. So take ye to the frosty seas and wrest the supplies from the clutches of ice-blooded brigands and help the intrepid explorer make it back home to complete his voyage!

The ocean has been divided into five teams, with pirates from the same crew all being placed on the same team. Pirates can participate and earn points for their team by defeating Brigands and Barbarians to win expedition supply items and assembling them into kits at Velasco Thorsson's depot near the docks on certain islands. Full details can be found here.

The competition ends on Wednesday, January 4th at 3 PM PDT.

One new player-created portrait background this week on Portrait Day, just in time for the peak of the celebrations!

Masters's Christmas Palace is an expansive background set inside a huge pirate palace, complete with tons of presents and a floor-to-ceiling festive fir! Christmas Palace and the previous Portrait Day's solo backgrounds will only be available until next Portrait Day, Tuesday, January 3rd at 3 PM PST. Not only that, but this week we've also turned on a few other festive Christmas backgrounds from Christmas past! They, too, will only be around until next Portrait Day, so be sure to go take a look.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

The holiday season is here, and we're celebrating with two brand new player-created backgrounds fit for the festive season!

Melquire's Winsome Coast is a snowy solo background set against a line of festive firs. Dexla's Warm Fire is a solo background featuring a cozy sitting room sheltered from a particularly chilly island winter. These two great backgrounds will be available until two Portrait Days from now, Tuesday, January 3rd at 3 PM PST, so don't miss out!

Happy Portrait Day, everyone!

Avast ye merry gentle-rogues! Can ye smell the new Limited Edition ship being baked up for this month? It’s sleek, small, and a holiday treat for all! It's a Gingerbread Class Sloop! So we've dropped down the chimney on our festive ol' chum the good captain Candybeard, who has once again graciously allowed us to take a tour. So welcome aboard his fresh-from-the-oven snackship "the Spiced Clownfish".

Here's the jolly olde cap'n standing on his tasty-looking deck, all iced to perfection with pirate-sized candy-canes and giant gumdrops galore. I asked the good captain the secret of the waterproof gingerbread decking, but I couldn't hear what he said through the muffler he had 'round his face! Moving right along...

Here we see the dread pirate Candybeard in his private cabin. Oooh! Look at all those goody-stuffed stockings by the fire! And no wonder the Roger is Jolly when there's cookie walls all decked with holly! And toys too for when there's no pillagin' to do. Apparently, Candybeard is not only a fearsome cutthroat, but he's also good at entertaining himself! That is a rather handsome model ship there, perhaps he wouldn't mind if I just borrowed it for a little while...

Yoho! A bakery in the hold! A grand tradition in the Gingerbread Class continues, filling the whole ship with a heavenly aroma - surely unusual for a pirate vessel! The only danger here me hearties, is chewing a hole through yer own hull!

The Gingerbread Class Sloop is only available until 3:00 PM PDT on the 1st of January 2012, so grab some grog-nog ye olde sea-dog, and jog on over to yer local Shipyard now!

This week on Portrait Day, we say hello to a brand new snowy battle background!

Corwyn's Dawn Raid is an expansive background featuring an all-out Viking assault against a wintry fort. This is a great background for memorializing a particularly exciting Viking Raid expedition! And the best part? Dawn Raid will be available permanently!

Be sure to check back in two weeks for some new and awesome limited edition backgrounds!

Happy Portrait Day, everyone!

From now until 3 PM PST on Monday, November 21st, every purchase of $9.95 or more will earn you a free Harvest Mystery Box! Featuring the seasonal color Wine, the Harvest Mystery Box has a wide array of awesome prizes inside: Wine-colored monkeys, Wine-painted War Brigs and Sloops, a Wine Cat, Wine furniture, clothing and more!

New prizes this year include the never-before-seen Wine Monkey, as well as sealed deeds for Wine-Colored War Brigs! Make your Harvest Celebration a bit more mysterious this year by getting your Mystery Box right now! For a full list of available prizes and other more detailed info, the official rules can be found on this page of our website.

Good luck, everyone!

Welcome to the first Portrait Day of November! This week, we say goodbye to all our Halloween and autumn backgrounds, and say hello to one set on a sunny atoll!

Verziga's Fruity Forage is a solo background that places you on a warm island filled with lush pomegranate trees! It's the harvest season, after all, so what better time than now to pick some fresh, delicious fruit? Fruity Forage will only be available until next Portrait Day, Tuesday, November 22nd at 3 PM PST, so head to your nearest portrait easel today!

Happy Portrait Day, everyone!

November is a time of feasting, so we here at Puzzle Pirates HQ have decided to celebrate the season in style with a properly mobile feast inside the hold of November's Limited Edition ship: the Harvest Class Cutter!

Here's Captain Quicksilver on the Harvest Class Cutter's quarterdeck, both decked out in warm Autumnal colors!

And this is the cozy hold of the Harvest Class Cutter, complete with Harvest Celebration feast and duty stations. That jolly tree would definitely come in handy if you happen to run out of carpentry materials, though we promise that it won't come to that!

The Harvest Class Cutter will only be around until 3 PM PDT on Thursday, December 1st, so harvest yours today!

With Halloween rapidly approaching, this Portrait Day we've decided to show up at your door with a giant candy bag stuffed with delicious portrait treats! The full list of new backgrounds...

• Cattrin's Out of the Coffin
• Corwyn's Haunted Cloister
• Dexla's Spider Web
• Rhodin's Festive Halloween
• Thedeath's Moonrise Among the Shadows

These great player-created backgrounds cover a wide variety of sizes, so no matter how big your group of hearties, we have you covered! Not only that, but in celebration of the season, we've also brought back a number of our favorite Halloween-themed backgrounds from previous years! Be sure to head to your nearest easel to take a peek at those!

All of these Halloween backgrounds will only be around until next Portrait Day, Tuesday, November 8th at 3 PM PST. Take yours now before the werewolf competition scampers off into the night!

Happy Portrait Day, everyone!

A shadowy presence known only as "The Grizzled Baron" has cursed the seas this Halloween, and now werewolfism is running rampant across the oceans. Not only that, but packs of wild werewolves can now be found harassing islands throughout the archipelagos! Show you're the leader of the pack this October and break the power of the sinister beast lord by battling the howling hordes and coming out on top!

The pirates of the oceans have been divided into several werewolf packs. For the duration of the competition, you'll earn points for your pack for every roving band of island-dwelling werewolves you defeat. At the end of the competition, all participants will receive a commemorative trophy, with the most prestigious going to the members of the victorious pack!

How does one become a werewolf, you ask? You can either be defeated in a rumble by an existing werewolf, or you can pick up a Moon Amulet from the Palace Shoppe to become a werewolf whenever you want!

The Tooth & Nail competition will stretch through Halloween until Monday, November 1st at 3 PM PDT. Happy Howler-ween!