I find myself with an extra copy of this puzzle that I completed last year, and so I’ve decided to hold another giveaway. 🙂 It’s a new, unopened copy of SewingCollage, a 500 piece Milton Bradley/Big Ben puzzle; you can read my post about this puzzle by clicking the link above.
I assembled this puzzle in September of last year and had a great time with it, and now if you’re the lucky winner you could have a great time assembling it too! All you have to do is comment on this post, and you’ll be entered in the drawing. I will use a random number generator to decide the winner and will post the results one week from today, Monday February 17, 2020.
Vintage Cake Shop by Aimee Stewart – Buffalo – 1000 pieces
I don’t assemble many 1000 piece Buffalo puzzles, it has something to do with the pieces; they all look exactly the same and sometimes I just don’t want to deal with it. I know, it doesn’t make much sense, but I never said that I was rational or that my brain was sensible – you just have to roll with it sometimes. 🤪
That being said, I loved this puzzle much more than I thought I would. It was more pastel than I’m used to seeing in Aimee Stewart’s work, but it made for a beautiful image and a great assembly. It was a little more challenging than I’d assumed, but entertaining and absolutely lovely.
Buffalo puzzles have excellent quality, with thick pieces that fit together well and very nice image reproduction. They also have a large catalog, including many exclusive images from Star Wars, Josephine Wall, Charles Wysocki, and Aimee Stewart. I’m not sure why I have a thing against them for having boxy pieces that all look the same, but I do. It doesn’t bother me with their smaller piece count puzzles, but with 1000 pieces or larger I just don’t care for it. Once I start working with the pieces though, it doesn’t bother me as much and I end up having a great time, like with this puzzle.
This is much more pale than I’m used to seeing when assembling an Aimee Stewart puzzle image, but it was still captivating and difficult to walk away from.
The display case of cakes was the most difficult section, and ended up being assembled last. All those cakes! It looks like a nice little shop to visit for some coffee and cake though, doesn’t it?
I’ve got a 2000 piece Cake Shed puzzle from Buffalo in the to do pile, and after assembling this puzzle I’m looking forward to seeing how the pieces are and how it fits together. I may try to get that one done sometime this month. More cake for everyone! 🍰
It was so nice to open this puzzle and see the fantastic quality of the pieces and feel the linen finish – it was wonderful to get back to a Cobble Hill puzzle, they’re excellent quality puzzles and it was lovely even to sort these pieces!
I got several gift cards this past Christmas, and one of them was for Barnes & Noble; I made sure to use it up in January when their puzzles are buy one get one 50% off – I made the most of my gift! I got plenty of puzzles to keep me entertained and happy for quite a while, and this is the first one that I’ve put together.
I don’t know why it’s been so long since I’ve assembled a Cobble Hill, they’re such nice quality. Part of it is that I’ve been mostly working puzzles from mom’s house, and partly because when I do venture out of the house in search of puzzles Tuesday Morning is where I normally go because it’s so close to my house. Unfortunately they don’t usually carry Cobble Hill. After putting this puzzle together though, I may have to suck it up and drive a little farther now and then, I loved working with these pieces!
Doughnut puzzle images are always fun for me, you can do like I did and separate out all of one color – like blue, or you can assemble it one doughnut at a time. Whichever way works for you is absolutely correct. I started with blue, green, and pink, and then the rest it of was mostly filling in. It wasn’t too easy or too difficult, this one was a total Goldilocks assembly – it was just right.
If you’re looking for a great quality doughnut puzzle, I can definitely recommend this one; big pieces, thick chipboard, linen finish, excellent fit – it’s got it all. 🍩👍
I love a food puzzle, and oddly they almost never make me hungry. Do any of you ever get hungry working with a food puzzle?
Usually for a 300 piece puzzle it gets finished the day that I start it, but this one has been on my board for 2 days now. It’s been a horrible week, but I’ve made it a point to get myself into the puzzle room at least once a day and do SOMETHING with a puzzle; whether it’s sorting pieces or putting a few of them together, as long as I got a little bit accomplished it helped.
I started with the more difficult side, the brush strokes make it a bit more of a challenge – but there’s fun in the harder ones, and every piece placed is a little victory. And once that side is finished the bright colors and interesting patterns on the opposite side should make for much quicker assembly.
So this beauty is still in progress, but hopefully I’ll be able to stay awake during the day and get it finished. You can’t really tell from the picture, but it’s a beautiful image, it’ll be gorgeous when it’s done. 🙂
Good Housekeeping Collection – New York Puzzle Company – 1000 pieces
I absolutely loved this puzzle, both because it was a collage and great fun and because it brought back memories. It was assembled once already. My mom and daughter did the majority of the assembly and I came in at the end and helped out; I didn’t feel as though I actually assembled it since they did most of the work, so it didn’t make it onto the blog. I have great memories of the three generations of women working on this together, and it’s a puzzle I will never get rid of.
I’ve done quite a few NY Puzzle Company puzzles, and I really like them. Their catalog has a lot of magazine covers, and I find they are great fun to assemble. The quality is very good too; thick pieces, very nice fit, and great image reproduction. I’ve never had a bad experience with this brand, which is something I can’t say about most of the brands I’ve assembled.
I just loved the look of this cover, how both the woman’s dress and the dog’s coat blend into the background color. (Plus, you can’t go wrong with a dog!) Several of the covers were the same, where the background color is the same as the clothes of the women so that they blend together.
I also was glad to see that not every cover is about fashion or cooking or some other “ladylike” pursuit – we ladies can do so much more than that! There were several covers of women doing things like working on a car tire, and even what I think was a suffragette being hauled off to prison. I like it!
My mother loved this puzzle, and that’s probably part of why I loved it too. It was great quality, a fun assembly, and a wonderfully challenging image – but even more than that it reminds me of her. She put this one together with my daughter and I before, but she loved it so much that she didn’t re-donate it, I found it at her house with her things. It’s a keeper for me, definitely.
My Jigsaw Journal 