Review: Harry Potter Book 7

On February 15, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Puzzle reviews5 Comments

This is the last of the Harry Potter book puzzles from the collector’s set I received for Christmas from my daughter. I absolutely loved assembling every single one of them – even Book 5 which was quite difficult! They’re excellent quality with fun subject matter, and perfect little *One Coffee Puzzles* you can finish in one sitting (perhaps with a cup of coffee or an adult beverage 😉 ).

I haven’t assembled many NY Puzzle Co. puzzles, but I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve done, and this set has raised my opinion of them even more. They have pieces that are a good thickness and fit together extremely well. The image reproduction is lovely with great detail and beautiful colors, and they were so enjoyable that I’d love to assemble every one of them again! All the pieces were the standard 2 prong/2 hole shape (what I call a ballerina), but there was plenty of variety of size and shape within them; accidentally placing a piece wrong was never a problem. With a puzzle of this size the lack of variety in shapes wasn’t an issue for me at all.

Many puzzlers never bother with small piece count puzzles, and I think they’re missing out. I used to think that anything less than 1000 pieces wasn’t worth my time, but I’ve come to the realization that puzzling is fun no matter the piece count. Puzzles of all sizes, shapes, and subjects make me happy! (In fact, we just bought a box of 10 kids puzzles from the thrift store – they’re only 24 pieces each, but they were so adorable and looked like they’d be pretty entertaining; at $1.99 for all 10 we couldn’t resist 🙂 )

Being an adult doesn’t mean I can only do puzzles with “adult” pieces counts; and I love that NY Puzzle Co. has many smaller puzzles in their catalog. Most of us puzzlers love that sense of pride and happiness you get when your puzzle is complete, and I think it’s just as rewarding to have that feeling when you complete a puzzle you can assemble in the time it takes to have a cup of coffee.

I adore these puzzles, and had the best time with each and every one. They’re wonderful quality and highly recommended. Alohomora! Open the box and unleash the magic. 🧙‍♂️

Details:

Title: Harry Potter Book 7
Artist: Mary GrandPre
Brand: NY Puzzle Company
Piece count: 100 pieces
Size: Approx. 7 x 9 in. (18 x 23 cm)
Purchased: New (gift)

Quality:

Board: Very good
Cutting: Very good
Image: Very good
Box: Very good, 7 boxes inside a larger box
Fit: Very good
Puzzle Dust: Small amount
Piece cut: Offset grid cut
Piece shapes: Good variety within single shape
Finish: Slightly shiny finish, lays flat

Overall Rating: Very good, highly recommended

Pets Selfie

On February 14, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

Pet Selfie — Pets Selfie by Howard Robinson – Wentworth – 40 pieces

For Valentine’s Day this year I decided to assemble this micro puzzle, because what better example of pure, unconditional love and friendship than our furry friends and family? They’re amazing, and always ready to give lots of love❣

You would think a puzzle hoarder like myself would have plenty of “love” puzzles to choose from, but I don’t (at the moment). There are many puzzles here that I love and am looking forward to assembling, but not ones that are love-related. But when I picked up this puzzle and saw the goofy faces of the pets I thought that this would be the perfect image for today. I think I was right; it’s so adorable and I love their sweet faces.

Pets Selfie whimsies

How cute are these whimsies? I was a little confused by the one in the middle though, perhaps it’s a dog house? Or do I have it upside down? Suggestions anyone?

Hubby and I don’t really do Valentine’s Day, we haven’t for most of our marriage. I expect him to treat me as if he loves me every single day of the year, and he expects the same from me. We don’t need a special day for it, in our house that stuff happens all the time. 💖

I do usually celebrate February 15th though – half price candy day!! 😉

2000 Piece Update

On February 13, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling8 Comments

2000 Update

This one is going quite slowly, but it’s a combination of things that’s making it take so very long. It has nothing to do with the quality or the amount of fun I’m having with the assembly; it’s mostly about how I’ve been feeling and the location of the board I’m working on.

Since it’s 2000 pieces it has to be done on a larger board, and my 3 x 4 foot puzzle board is currently occupied with the Mystery Puzzle. I borrowed mom’s board of the same size but it’s on the floor in my bedroom and that’s really the only place I can work on it. It’s not easy for me to get down on the floor to work on it (and getting up is no picnic either), so the time I can spend on this puzzle is limited at best.

If someone’s around to help, I could lift it onto my bed and work on it there; but even then I have to work sitting up with no support for my back and hips and the amount of time I can do that is pretty restrictive.

I’m 9 days into this assembly, still dealing with a cold/virus that doesn’t seem to want to go away, and a place to puzzle that isn’t very conducive to quick or efficient progress. Oh well. I make it a point to place a few pieces every day – no matter what. So although it may take me quite a while to finish it, I will definitely be completing it at some point in time. 🙂

I’ve gotten all the words together, and almost all the lines between the scenes done, so now it’s up to sorting and assembling each section. I love the look of it, the fantastic Ravensburger quality, and in general am having a great time! ❤

Harry Potter Book 6

On February 12, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

I love the color on this one, and like the first five in the series this one was great fun to put together.

NY Puzzle Company has a bunch of 100 piece mini puzzles, and I find them relaxing to assemble and extremely entertaining! Being a proud cheapskate I find it a little difficult to spend full price for a puzzle with only 100 pieces that will only take me 10 minutes or so to assemble, but that doesn’t mean they’re not lots of fun. 😉

Mystery Box – One Month In

On February 11, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling6 Comments

Mystery Puzzle 14

It’s been a month since mom and I starting working on The Challenge of 2019, and we’ve made excellent progress!

About 2 weeks in we’d finished the sky portion of the image, and we’ve been working on the symmetrical pieces for the last couple of weeks. All these clusters are the results of that progress. You can see on the right side all the little assembled pieces of buildings, that’s what we’re currently working on. There are many buildings in this image, but I think there will be one enormous building in the foreground when we’re done – the Municipal Building in New York City.

The color line cutting makes things very challenging, and you have to try to make your brain focus on the shapes only, because color and background are almost no help at all. You can see the many straight edges on some of the pieces we’ve already put together; where the building meets the roof – straight edge, where the roof meets something in the background – straight edge. It makes it almost impossible to assemble the edges of the puzzle first, but we’re loving it anyway❣

Every piece we find and connect feels like an enormous victory, and mom and I are constantly stopping the other so they can witness the connection. It sounds stupid to put in into words, but it’s an extremely complicated puzzle and the connections almost never look like what you think they will – we’re so proud when we find something!

Mystery Puzzle 15

We’ve also gotten a very large chunk of pieces connected to sky, and believe me there were many little old lady high fives all around! Connecting two pieces together is awesome, but connecting a large block of pieces to the sky made us so unbelievably happy – we both have P.A.D.S., and finding these connections made our entire day. 😉

We still don’t have a final piece count, but mom promises to print out the pictures today so I can start counting the sky pieces and get a grand total. (Why we didn’t think to count them first I honestly don’t know, probably because we didn’t know that the whole box was only one image) I’m hopeful that whenever I post next about this puzzle I’ll be able to give an accurate piece count, we’re thinking it’s going to be around 1500 pieces. It looks like it may be missing a piece or two, but that doesn’t matter much to us, we’re still having a fantastic time puzzling together and enjoying this amazing vintage wooden puzzle. 😎