Aquatic Harmony

On February 15, 2020February 15, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles6 Comments

Aquatic Harmony is an older Sure-Lox puzzle, so unfortunately the quality is quite lacking compared to the newer puzzles of theirs that I’ve assembled. It had very thin pieces, image lift on several of them, and some of the pieces weren’t completely cut through and couldn’t be separated.

Aquatic Harmony 1

It’s supposed to be a puzzle that the whole family can work on together, with three different sizes of pieces so that both young and older family members can participate. But the way this one is constructed, it doesn’t seem like it’s feasible for everyone to work together on their respective pieces. It’s designed so that the largest pieces are on the outside, going smaller into the middle; the smallest pieces can’t be connected to anything until the middle sized pieces are in place. I suppose they could be assembled by themselves and then placed into the puzzle, but that’s not always easy to do with a lesser quality puzzle like this one.

Aquatic Harmony 2

This is the puzzle with just the large pieces assembled. The middle pieces go next, working towards the center.

Aquatic Harmony 3

Now the middle sized pieces are all put in, and it’s time for the “adult” pieces to go in, right in the center.

This was a difficult puzzle, almost everything was blue, or shades of blue and white. The underwater section was the most challenging, even with the largest pieces. The image itself isn’t one I would choose for a family puzzle, it seems pretty demanding for a puzzle the whole family would be working on, perhaps a more colorful one would be better. This is all just my opinion of course, there are probably plenty of families out there that may think this image is perfect for the whole family to assemble.

I’d like to tell you I enjoyed assembling this one, but the truth is that it just wasn’t my pile of pieces. It’s not exactly a monochromatic image, but it certainly felt as though it was, and they are not a type of image I particularly enjoy. Image aside, the poor quality of the chipboard and the cutting makes this a puzzle that I can’t recommend. There are plenty of other brands out there that produce very good quality family puzzles, and my suggestion is to give one of those a try.

Candy For All Seasons

On February 14, 2020February 14, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles6 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today is the day for love, and gifts of flowers, jewelry, and candy if you believe the commercials. Hubby and I don’t go in for all of that; he treats me like the queen I am all year long. 👑

Anyway, to the puzzle! I don’t have any Valentine’s Day puzzles here at the house, and I don’t like to repeat any posts, so this one was the closest I could get specific to today’s holiday. I associate some holidays with candy – Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas. This puzzle has one heart lollipop which is the only candy I could find for Valentine’s Day; it’s a little sad, one lonely lollipop.

There’s plenty of chocolate eggs and rabbits for the Easter holiday. The only thing I could find specifically for Halloween was the candied apple at the bottom. There are some Christmas chocolates in the foreground, but really not that much.

The surprise for me was the Thanksgiving candy. I don’t associate that holiday with candy at all, for Americans it’s all about the Thanksgiving dinner; but there were several things shown here that I’ve never seen at all.

Candy 1

I have never seen a chocolate turkey before, or anything like the lollipop shown here. It’s probably the least appetizing “candy” I’ve ever seen. I certainly wouldn’t want to eat it – candy corn and green chocolate – ugh. Does that sound good to anyone?

I’m familiar with most of the candies shown, but I’ve never seen or eaten Turkish Taffy or Abba Zabbas. I’ve seen and tried Lemon Heads, but never knew they make other flavors like Cherry Heads and Apple Heads too!

The quality was a little disappointing with this one, most notably the fuzzy image reproduction. I’ve seen this on several White Mountain collages, but it doesn’t stop me from buying them. It can be a bit annoying, but they have some of the best collages in the business and collages are my favorite type of puzzle to assemble – so I just deal with it. If it’s important to you though, you should be aware.

This White Mountain puzzle was a thrift store find, and I very much enjoyed putting it together, even with the four missing pieces. According to my puzzle friend Nicola, the task is to put together all the pieces you have until there are none left. The puzzle may not be complete and you may have missing pieces, but you have completed your task when you place the last piece. If you look at it that way, it’s a little less frustrating, right?

I try not to get too upset at missing pieces, most especially the ones from the thrift store. In my mind, I’m dividing the time spent by the amount paid for the puzzle. If I spent 8 hours on a thrift store puzzle that I bought for $1.99, then even if there is a missing piece or two I have gotten a fantastic deal! Where else can you get time to yourself, productive entertainment, and all the health benefits that come from assembling jigsaw puzzles for only 25 cents an hour? A bargain at 100 times the price!

Window Shoppers In Progress

On February 13, 2020February 13, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling2 Comments

Shoppers IP — Window Shoppers – Ravensburger – 1000 pieces

This puzzle got started on Tuesday afternoon, but unfortunately there were things that had to be done yesterday that took up the entire morning. When I finally did get home I was wrung out and ready to do absolutely nothing – and that is what I did.

Life is constantly trying to insert itself into our puzzling time; the family wants food, clean clothes, a tidy house – so rude!

Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to it today and make some more progress. I was enjoying myself before quitting time came. 🙂

Knitters Stash

On February 12, 2020February 12, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

This was a fun and wonderfully challenging puzzle, and I think the finished image is very pretty; it reminds me of my mom who always had yarn or crochet thread with her when she went anywhere. In addition, mom got this puzzle for us at the thrift store – it has her written all over it.

It was one of those Springbok puzzles with a very tight fit, which we know I am not a fan of; but even though the fit was a bit annoying I had a great time putting this together. It took my aging brain a little longer than normal to adapt itself to working with a random cut, but the challenge of it had me completely engrossed.

Thrift stores have so many treasures like this to find, I miss my black belt thrift store shopper – not only was she the best mom ever, she also always found amazing puzzles for us to try. Love you mom. 💖💖

Review: Farmers’ Market

On February 11, 2020February 10, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Puzzle reviews, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

While I enjoyed the bright colors and interesting image, the very shiny finish and extremely slippery backing made this puzzle a bit difficult to assemble and VERY difficult to photograph. It was entertaining to put together, but I ended up with a negative impression of it partly because photographing the puzzle is the last thing I do, and this one was a bugger to take a picture of!

I work under artificial lights, but with my fabric covered board it’s usually easy to get a good photograph – the chipboard backing on the puzzles sticks to the fabric and doesn’t move when I lean the board up against the wall. Taking pictures this way takes care of glare from the lights, and makes it easier to get a picture of the puzzle straight on. This puzzle though, with it’s slippery paper on the backing just kept sliding right off! Since I couldn’t lean the board even a little bit I had to take a picture with the board flat and ended up with quite a bit of glare. It took many pictures and much more time than usual to get a good picture. It was extremely frustrating. 🤬

The puzzle itself had large, thick pieces that fit together well, but unfortunately that’s where my positives end. The backing didn’t have a good feel in my hands, the finish was extremely shiny and caused glare under the lights, and the image reproduction made it very easy to tell that this was a digital collage. I’ve worked many, many, many collage puzzles – I would say that most of them have been digitally altered or assembled – but this was the first puzzle that made it glaringly obvious.

I’ve been going back and forth about whether or not to recommend this puzzle to my readers. On the one hand I enjoyed the actual assembly, but on the other hand I had several issues with the quality (that didn’t involve picture taking). It all depends on what characteristics are most important to you when assembling a puzzle. I found the image to be bright and colorful – and also too shiny with a very obvious digitally altered image. The chipboard was thick with a good fit – although the backing felt odd and almost sharp in my hands.

Overall the puzzle itself had good quality, and I mostly enjoyed the assembly, so it is recommended (even though if I came across another of these Trendz puzzles by MasterPieces I would pass it on by). It’s not my pile of pieces, but it may be yours. 🙂

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