Arcane Shelfie

On June 15, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

About a week before Mother’s Day my daughter said that she wanted to start working on puzzles again, but she didn’t have the space for it at the moment; so I decided to get her a small wooden puzzle for Mother’s Day. She IS the “mom” of my grandpuppies after all! I bought her this puzzle, and she brought it over to my house the next weekend so we could assemble it together, I chose well – we loved it!

The design of the pieces for this puzzle drew me in, and the image itself is so adorable it was calling to me from the computer screen. Artifact Puzzles have some of the most interesting piece cuts I’ve ever seen, their designers are extraordinary! This puzzle is quite small, at 5.5 x 16.5 inches (approx. 14 x 42 cm) it doesn’t take up much room, and the pieces are so delightful and unique it makes for quite an entertaining and challenging assembly.

There are a LOT of straight edges in this puzzle which made putting it together more difficult than I had assumed. The pipe-styled connectors and the pieces they fit into are interesting to work with and give your brain quite a workout! Of course this is a plus in my book, time spent puzzling with such an interesting image and wonderful pieces is very much time well spent. Plus I got to assemble it with my daughter, which was even more wonderful. 💕

I bought another interestingly shaped Artifact puzzle for my mom’s Mother’s Day present. They’re great to give as gifts – and when I give them to family who live close by that means I get to assemble them too. Bonus! I’m looking forward to assembling mom’s puzzle too, but she hasn’t finished it herself yet. Hurry up mom! Or better yet, bring it over here and we can assemble it together. 😁

Puzzle in Progress

On June 14, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

I’m having lots of fun with this puzzle so far, I love the artwork. It’s the Patchwork series by Milton Bradley, and the patterns are gorgeous and make for really fun puzzling!

I’ve already completed Pattern 4, and I’m on the lookout for Pattern 1 (of course I’d have to leave the house and go shopping to find it, but those are minor details 😉 ) I can’t even find an image of Pattern 2 anywhere online, so either it wasn’t made into a puzzle or it is no longer in production.

The quality of these “brick box” puzzles is quite good; I love the feel of the pieces and the fit is excellent. I’m hoping to get this one finished today, it’s too much fun to leave sitting for long!

The Petting Zoo

On June 13, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This was a quick puzzle that I decided to put together without looking at the box; I guess I needed a little bit of extra challenge. There were plenty of animals and little details to help out with the assembly, and lots of words to put together too!

The quality of this puzzle was quite good; the pieces were very thick and the fit was exceptional. I’ve found that the large EZ grip puzzles from MasterPieces have much better quality than their regular puzzles, the chipboard they use is thicker and more dense and makes for an excellent tactile experience. The cut is random, which makes for interesting piece shapes and also makes you look more closely at the pieces and colors to find what you’re looking for.

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I really enjoyed all the little details of this image, all the horse’s stalls have their names above them, and each of the pens had signs on them as well.

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I love the art of Art Poulin, I’ve done several of his puzzles and enjoy the Americana/Folk images he produces. They bring to mind images of simpler times, when none of the kids had cell phones or tablets and were happy to spend time at the petting zoo interacting with the animals and being in nature.

It seems as if I’m becoming one of those little old ladies talking about how great things used to be – and I haven’t even turned 50 yet! 👵

Robots

On June 12, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This cute kids puzzle is adorable to look at, but had disappointing quality. Puzzles are so good for the brain development of children, I wish all the makers of puzzles for kids put the effort in to making great quality puzzles for them.

The image itself reminds me of Birthday Owls that I assembled last year. The artwork is very similar, but that puzzle had better quality than this one. The collage-type image is an easy one to assemble, and is great for helping gain confidence when assembling a puzzle with a larger piece count.

Mega Puzzles have hit or miss quality from my experience, this one was a miss. You can see below that the pieces don’t lie flat because they’re on the thin side and easily bent.

Although the quality wasn’t the best it was still a fun little puzzle to put together. I do love a collage!

Old World Map Calendar

On June 11, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This puzzle is a very interesting concept; it’s a calendar within a puzzle, and you are supposed to be able to reassemble it every month. Cool idea, but not at all practical in my opinion.

I like vintage map puzzles, I find they can be intimidating and tough to put together, but I love the look of them and enjoy the challenge. This map was no exception, with beautiful colors and an interesting background.

The fit is extremely tight so that you can hang the finished puzzle with no glue or taping needed to keep it together. There are basically only 2 different shapes of pieces; this is so all the pieces can be interchangeable when you need to reconfigure the calendar each month. This is where the it becomes impractical; any puzzle made from cardboard isn’t going to be able to withstand multiple disassembling and reassembling – especially when the fit is so tight.

You can see below that the tabs are lifting and the image is coming off, and in some places the image is actually torn off. Perhaps a plastic puzzle would be a better way to go with this idea. With cardboard, no matter how sturdy it is, it will start to come apart after many assemblies.

I assembled it for this month, June. The 10th is a family birthday, the 17th is Father’s Day, and the full moon this month is on the 28th. The extra 160 pieces are for the major holidays, and extra days and spaces.

It was fun to put this together, and while I like the idea and the finished puzzle it just isn’t at all reasonable for a cardboard puzzle. Still it was an excellent thrift store find and I’m glad it was all there and I was able to try it out.