Page & Screen

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles3 Comments

Page & Screen – Re-marks – 1000 pieces

Soooo…………of course I loved this one! The dopamine that book cover puzzles gives me makes me so very happy. Unfortunately I only have three or four of them left here, perhaps a shopping trip is in order???

The quality of this puzzle was excellent all around, my only problem was with the glare from the shiny finish – it was one of those puzzles I needed to turn off the light above the puzzle board and only use the room light. When I find myself tilting either my head or the tray of pieces I know that the light above the board needs to go to sleep for a bit. The previous puzzle I assembled, Admont Abbey Library, had such a beautiful matte finish that it was almost shocking to start working with this puzzle which seemed very very shiny in comparison.

Usually what I do with a book cover puzzle is pick out a few books and talk about them and my history with them. This puzzle is about the page and the screen though, so I decided to do something different this time. First, I’m going to tell you that I’ve only read nine of the fifty books shown here; and I’ve seen 22 of the movies. There’s quite the difference, huh? We’re a streaming society now, and movies are much more readily available than books are, unfortunately.

Second I’m going to ask a couple of questions.

First question, if there was one book shown here that you would recommend as perhaps an underappreciated gem, what would it be?

Even though it’s a bestseller, I don’t think this book is appreciated enough. There’s a lot of blather in the first chapter about money and deals and yadda yadda yadda. The first time I read the book I thought, “what the hell is this crap?” and almost stopped reading. Thank goodness I kept going, because this book triology is one of my all time favorites and I can’t even remember how many times I’ve read all three books. I don’t recommend the movie made in the US though, the Swedish version is much better, and they made all three movies in Sweden. My darling hubby bought me the set (dubbed in English) cause he knows how much I loved the books and he’s a very good guy. 💕

Now for the second question, if there was one movie shown here that you would recommend to someone who hadn’t seen it, which one would it be?

I absolutely adore a good thriller, and even though this isn’t a book I’ve read I very much enjoyed this movie and have seen it several times. There’s something wonderful about a movie that sucks you into the story and you suspend all disbelief and just go with it wherever it takes you. This movie was like that for me, and it gets my recommendation if you’ve never seen it. Or if you’ve seen it already, maybe watch it again – it’s fun!

This puzzle was great fun, and a little bit of a challenge for me as I didn’t use the box image or poster and did this one just using the image on the pieces and let it take me where it went. I’ve done so many of these book cover puzzles that they’re almost too easy using the poster and more of a challenge was needed this time.

If you find this one out in the world it’s highly recommended. Great image!

Admont Abbey Library

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Admont Abbey Library by William Carr – Ravensburger – 500 pieces

This is an absolutely beautiful image, and even though photographic puzzles aren’t my usual fare this one was completely enjoyable. I remember that I bought this one new, but when and from where is completely erased from this old lady brain. It’s been floating around the puzzle room for years because it just looked too difficult, or too dull, or not enough of something else; I’m glad I finally decided to give it a go, it was well worth the wait.

Excellent Ravensburger quality, as usual, with an exceptionally good fit – almost good enough to stand on it’s edge, but not quite. The colors seem muted, but in reality are brighter than shown on the box. My one peeve about this puzzle is that the image on the box was covered in two different places, and there was no poster on the inside of the box to make up for that. Honestly, why companies continue to cover up parts of the image with their redundant branding is so confounding and annoying. It is for me anyway.

This is another puzzle where a closeup isn’t really needed, you can see what there is to see. It’s a beautiful picture of a stunning library that looks too beautiful to have people traipsing in and out and touching things. It made for a wonderful build that I am so glad I finally tried. Loved this one!

Pepsi In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

Pepsi – Rose Art – 300 pieces

Another fun collage of sorts, this time it’s Pepsi – one of my favorite drinks. Penny sent this one along for me to do, and I don’t think I realized until I was laying all the pieces out just how much of a challenge this one would be. It’s harder than it looks!

Here’s the best part, the difficulty seems to be what is making it so much fun for me.😁

I sat down to just get started and put a bit together to be sure I had something to post today; but I couldn’t seem to tear myself away from it. I stopped only because I had to get it photographed and typed up before 8 am. All my posts are set to go live at that time, even the in progress ones; and every third day it will automatically be published – whether I’ve typed anything up yet or not. (Yes I could set things up differently, but this way keeps me on my toes and gives me incentive to get myself out of bed, even on those off days when I’m not feeling like it)

That’s just to say that it’s almost 8:00 this morning and I had to make myself stop puzzling and start typing. This puzzle will be done now before you know it, there’s just over two trays left to go!

Colorful Crayola

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Colorful Crayola – Buffalo – 300 pieces

I know, this one’s a little trippy to look at. Sorry. But it was lots of fun to put together, and it makes for an impressive finished image, doesn’t it?

There is absolutely no clue where I got this puzzle from, but it was a new, never been opened Buffalo. Right out of the box I could tell there was a quality issue with this beauty – some of it’s makeup was scraped off!

It was only on a few pieces, but some of the image seems to have been abraded off somehow. Honestly, I know how most problems with quality happen, but I’m a little bit at a loss for this one. I’ve seen how sometimes the color can come off while you’re applying glue, or how the image comes up because it isn’t applied to the chipboard correctly – this is different. It looks to have been scraped across the top of the puzzle, which doesn’t make much sense to me. Plus, if you scroll back up to look at the complete puzzle you can see that these are from all over on the puzzle, not just in one spot. Anyone out there have any suggestions as to how this happens to only a few pieces?

Anyway, even with this one problem the rest of the puzzle was the typical excellent Buffalo quality, and in particular the fit was exceptional. I don’t usually do the same brand one after another, but this was a much nicer fit than my previous puzzle (Aimee Stewart’s Carnival Costumes).

Yup! You guessed it – The Stacey Stance! This is the first puzzle I’ve been able to do this with since my fellow puzzle blogger Penny named this silly picture pose after me. I was VERY excited to be able to do this one, now that it bears my name and all. 😎

As an added bonus, my youngest, who seems to be more interested in helping out with puzzles lately came in to help me finish up this puzzle this morning. He left the last piece for me, but I think next time I may let him get that honor.

We both loved the look of this gorgeous, and very different puzzle image.

Carnival Costumes

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles1 Comment

Carnival Costumes by Aimee Stewart – Buffalo – 1000 pieces

This gorgeous thing was on my board for almost four days, but it didn’t matter how long it took because it was so much fun from start to finish!

It was the typical Buffalo quality, very good. Thank goodness my favorite puzzle artist has chosen to work with companies that actually give a crap about the quality of their products, I don’t think I could bear it if her work was only found on Ceaco puzzles, or something even worse. Luckily though, she works with Buffalo in the US, Schmidt and Ravensburger internationally, and probably more. In fact, I’ve got a package on the way to my house from the UK (as I’m writing this, by the time you read this the package will have arrived) with three Aimee Stewart puzzles from Schmidt that I wasn’t able to find in the US from Buffalo.

Usually Aimee Stewart images are chock full of little things you don’t really notice until you’re putting the puzzle together, but this image is very different. It’s costumes, and only costumes – what you see is what you get. They all look so glamorous from far away, but actually when you look at them close up some of them are kind of ugly! Each different outfit was fun to assemble, and the way the colors work together is absolutely stunning.

I loved this image the first time I saw it, and I still love it now. Fantastic puzzle with a fantastic image that made for a quite a few days of fantastic puzzling. 💖