Harry Potter Book 4

harry potter book 4
Harry Potter Book 4 by Mary GrandPre – NY Puzzle Co. – 100 pieces

Not as quick and simple as your usual 100 piece children’s puzzle, the image gives you a bit of a cerebral workout – or maybe I’m losing brain cells at a faster rate than I’d thought. 😉

These Harry Potter puzzles are one of my favorite Christmas presents this year, I’m having a great time with them. Thank you very much my beautiful daughter. ❤

*I apologize for another short post, I’m still trying to get over this bleeping cold*

Knightingale

knightingale
Knightingale by Marja-Leena Montonen – Ceaco – 550 pieces

Knightingale was a fun image with beautiful colors and interesting artwork; unfortunately it also had poor quality too. There was a great deal of image lift which robbed me of the joy I get when running my hands over the completed puzzle – there were too many tabs sticking up and I didn’t want my puzzle massage to tear any of them off.  Still it was a great find at the thrift store, I got several hours of enjoyable puzzle time for only 69 cents!

The artist may have been inspired by Picasso – or this scene is set somewhere near a leaking nuclear reactor. Fun characters with interesting colors, I’d love to find more puzzles with her artwork – it was even more fun to assemble than I’d hoped. 🙂

Off to the Market!

off to the market!
Off to the Market by Thomas Wood – Wentworth – 40 pieces

First completed wooden puzzle of the year. So cute! It has lovely bright colors, and excellent quality. I love this image too, so many adorable puppies!

off to the market! whimsies

Please forgive the shortness of today’s post, I’ve come down with quite a cold/virus and am feeling terrible. I miss being able to breathe through my sinuses! 🤕

Mystery Box – Day 13

mystery puzzle 9

It’s looking pretty good, right? We put all the rest of the pieces on trays, filled in all the holes we had, and started working on the actual image. We assembled some smaller roof sections (not shown), and started working on the symmetrical pieces, trying to find the interesting shapes that fit into and around them, like the ones below.

mystery puzzle 10

It’s not as easy as you might think to find the right pieces; back in the days of hand cut wooden puzzles they did their very best to make things as challenging as possible. Many times what fits insides these spaces are two pieces cut so that it almost obscures the shape you think you’re looking for. Talk about focusing the mind! You’ve got to have pretty intense concentration when you’re working on this puzzle! (That’s part of the fun for us though, we’re loving it 💞) There are about 35 or 40 more symmetrical pieces in this sort of style, but they all look very different! For a black and white photograph like the one we’re working on it seems the easiest place to start.

We also found 3 American flags that have the hand coloring (painting) on them, they really stood out!

mystery puzzle 11

I can’t say for certain, but to me it looks as if they were painted directly onto the puzzle. It’s so interesting! When we first saw it, I thought some idiot had marked up one of the pieces with an ink pen. Thank goodness that wasn’t the case. 😉

We took good pictures of the sky before we started adding pieces, because we want to get a piece count. We we smarter this time and counted the pieces as we were putting them on trays, but we’ve got to go back and count the ones we’ve already assembled. They won’t be easy to count, so I think it’ll work best to print pictures of the sections so we can mark them as we’re counting and don’t lose track.

I’m guessing the total is going to be around 1500 pieces. We had 1125 on trays, plus the sky sections. I’m surprised by that number though, I thought it would have been more. Perhaps it’s because many of the pieces are quite large, especially the symmetrical ones; it seems as though it should be much more than 1500 pieces. It’s a big one!

We’re having a blast with this project, and I hope you’re enjoying reading about it and seeing the pictures too. ☺

 

Review: Harvest Festival

harvest festival
Harvest Festival by Jonathan Green – Tidemark – 1000 pieces

Harvest Festival is a colorful, entertaining, and gorgeous puzzle that I enjoyed immensely! It combined the fun of working with such an interesting image with the challenge of a semi-random cut – and to top it off it was a very good quality puzzle. 🙂

Tidemark puzzles are a new to me company, and I was pretty impressed with both the image and the quality. The pieces are semi-randomly cut, a good thickness, and fit together quite well. The image reproduction is bright and colorful with crisp lines and very little glare. Their catalog is quite small with only 8 images to choose from, but if one of them strikes your fancy you should give it a try. (Most of them are a little muted for my taste, but there may be something you’d love to assemble.)

The wavy lines of color weren’t easy and got a little tedious on the last day of assembly, but I still love the image and am super proud of myself for sticking with it.

harvest festival 1

The artwork by Jonathan Green is so striking that I couldn’t help but enjoy myself; bright colors in a puzzle make me happy, and don’t we all need a little more happiness in our lives? I know I do. 🙂

Details:

  • Title:                  Harvest Festival
  • Artist:                Jonathan Green
  • Brand:               Tidemark
  • Piece count:     1000 pieces
  • Size:                  Approx. 19 x 27 in. (48 x 67 cm)
  • Purchased:      New

Quality:

  • Board:               Very good
  • Cutting:             Very good
  • Image:               Very good
  • Box:                   Average
  • Fit:                     Very good
  • Puzzle Dust:     Moderate amount
  • Piece cut:          Semi-random cut
  • Piece shapes:   Good variety
  • Finish:               Slightly shiny finish, lays flat

Overall Rating:      Very good, recommended