Little Red Riding Hood – Milton Bradley – 60 pieces
This Milton Bradley puzzle was good quality, though the pieces seemed thin to me because I’d already assembled 6 Ravensburger kid’s puzzles that day – what puzzle company could compete with that? Not many!
This puzzle had good quality pieces with bright, fun colors and an excellent variety of piece shapes. It’s a cute image that was easy enough to assemble and fit together very well. Pretty darn good quality!
I enjoy working kid’s puzzles for several reasons. First, it’s nice to put together an entire puzzle in one sitting; it gives me a little ego boost and makes me feel like the puzzle goddess I think I am in my own mind. Second, I enjoy all puzzles no matter the piece count – even if they’re geared toward children. And lastly, I think most puzzle blogs are geared towards adults and kid’s puzzles deserve to be assembled and reviewed as much as adult puzzles are. If a company makes excellent puzzles for children people should hear about it, and parents need to know what company’s puzzles have good quality. (I’m trying to do my part ☺)
Assembling jigsaw puzzles is good for your brain no matter your age, but they are especially positive for the developing brains of children. They help promote spatial awareness, problem solving, fine motor skills and much, much more. Whether you find them at a thrift store or a retail outlet, a jigsaw puzzle is a fabulous gift for a child – you could be starting them out on a lifetime of puzzling!
Dog Gallery by Gretchen Kish Serrano – Cobble Hill – 1000 pieces
This puzzle was such great fun, I’m so glad I got to assemble it! If you love a good collage, great works of art, or dogs, you should enjoy this puzzle as much as I did. Gretchen Kish Serrano has inserted dogs into famous works of art, and the result is this adorable, funny, and fun to assemble puzzle.
Cobble Hill puzzles are excellent quality in my opinion, and this year they also have a new box design and have added posters to the puzzles to make up for the logo covering a portion of the image on the lid. Even better! I’m not a collector, so the box design isn’t usually something I’m overly interested in, but for those of you who do collect the new box designs are quite nice. The puzzle image takes up the entire lid, with a small logo in one corner; all 4 sides have a portion of the picture along with brand name, artist, title, and piece count, making it easy to shelve either vertically or horizontally. Puzzle Warehouse is one of Cobble Hill’s preferred online retailers; click here to see all Cobble Hill puzzles currently available.
Their pieces are a good thickness and fit together quite well. The fit on this puzzle was a little bit loose but not so much as to be a distraction. The image reproduction was excellent with a matte finish; the random cut made the assembly interesting and fun, and the image was perfect for puzzling in my opinion!
I started with all the smaller images within the image (it wasn’t difficult to sort them), and then I assembled the 2 patrons – don’t they look like good girls/boys sitting so quietly looking at the art? When all that was left was picture frames and red background I sorted the remaining pieces by shape/number of knobs and started working on filling in. This is usually the part that begins to feel tedious after a while, but not so with this puzzle. The difference in the shades and patterns of each picture frame, along with the random cut of the pieces made the filling in almost as fun as each picture itself.
I highly recommend this puzzle, especially if you’re a dog lover like I am. The moment I saw this image I knew I would love assembling this puzzle – I hope you do too! 🐶
Can you name all the works of art represented here? I know them all except for the one in the upper left corner, can anyone help me out and let me know the title and artist? I couldn’t find anything online, but I was most likely not looking in the right places. My favorite artwork from this puzzle is below, along with the original artwork – I love that long flowing hair!
It’s The Birth of Venus re-imagined! I love it! How about this next one….
It’s The Kiss by Klimt! Isn’t that adorable? One last one, because I can’t resist….
Salvador Dali’s famous melting clocks in The Persistence of Memory. Those dogs look completely unimpressed – what great faces!
Details:
Title: Dog Gallery
Artist: Gretchen Kish Serrano
Brand: Cobble Hill Puzzles
Piece count: 1000 pieces
Size: Approx. 27 x 19 in. (68 x 49 cm)
Purchased: No cost, sent for review
Quality:
Board: Very good
Cutting: Very good
Image: Excellent
Box: Sturdy
Fit: Very good, slightly loose
Puzzle Dust: Moderate amount
Piece cut: Random cut
Piece shapes: Very good variety
Finish: Matte finish, lays flat
Overall Rating: Very good, highly recommended
I received this product at no cost in order to facilitate this review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are truthful and 100% my own.
Art Nouveau Poster Collage – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 750 pieces
This is an amazingly beautiful collage that mom picked out for us. I thought it would be as difficult as the Santa Collage from Wentworth that we did, but it went together a little bit easier. The colors and artwork are absolutely lovely, and it was so much fun!
The smaller 500 piece Santa collage was quite a challenge, and we thought this one would be too. Don’t get me wrong, it was a challenge, but we were also surprised that it went together as quickly as it did. We enjoyed ourselves very much; we always do when working with wooden puzzles, they’re such great quality and so much fun to work with.
We always start by picking out all the whimsy pieces and seeing all the clever shapes. So many interesting shapes from all over the world – Christ the Redeemer, Sydney Opera House (I think), The Statue of Liberty, The Thinker, a can-can girl, and so many more…
Exceptional whimsies!
Such lovely whimsies were a perfect compliment to such a lovely puzzle. The vintage art nouveau posters made an excellent collage that was a joy to assemble. The colors were wonderful to work with and mom and I loved placing every single piece!
If you haven’t worked a wooden puzzle, it takes a little getting used to. The pieces don’t fit together like your average cardboard puzzle, the fit is much looser and it takes some time to get the hang of it. I find it’s easier to work with wooden puzzles on my fabric covered board, the fabric makes it a little more difficult for the pieces to move too much. The loose fit of the pieces and the more obvious piece shapes showing in the finished image are the two major drawbacks of wooden puzzles that I’ve found. I don’t find them much of a problem at all actually, and as long as I could afford it I would never hesitate to get myself another wooden puzzle.
I always end my posts about wooden puzzles by telling my readers that if they are able to they should think about treating themselves to a wooden puzzle. I’ll end this one the same way, maybe take a few dollars from your tax refund this year (if you get one) to reward yourself with a beautiful wooden puzzle!
Vintage Signs by Lois B. Sutton – White Mountain – 1000 pieces
I guess having this blog means I pay more attention to the names of the puzzles I do, I write about each one separately. This is the second time this month that I’ve had a duplicate name. One day when I assembled a bunch of kid’s puzzles there were two different ones with the same title; and this puzzle has the same title as a Re-marks collage I reviewed recently. I suppose with so many puzzles out there it’s bound to happen though. 🙂
I had a great time putting this one together. It seems more satisfying for me to work a collage, I think because there’s that gratifying sense of completion with each small section. Small little victories within the whole that, for me, bring smiles and satisfaction. Whatever the reason, I’m looking forward to more collages right now; mom has a bunch of them from White Mountain at her house that I’m going to borrow very soon!
White Mountain has one of the best catalogs of collages around; there’s something for everyone. Charlie Girard and Lois B. Sutton are a couple of my favorite artists in this genre, I particularly love her stamp collages – they are so pretty!
Unfortunately this thrift store puzzle is missing a piece, but it was still great fun to assemble and has me itching get my hands on more collages. I can’t wait to get to mom’s and pick out my next puzzle! 😎
Sugar & Spice by Charles Wysocki – Buffalo – 300 pieces
I’ve done several Charles Wysocki puzzles lately with single buildings, and I very much enjoy them. They’ve mostly been Buffalo puzzles, and I honestly prefer the 300 piece count in this brand.
For me, I have to be in the right frame of mind to do a larger Buffalo puzzle, it’s something about the size of the pieces, but I’m honestly not exactly sure what it is. I open a 1000 piece Buffalo puzzle that I love the image of and look at the pieces, and most of the time I put the lid back on and say “not today”. I prefer the 300 and 500 piece counts because they’re not as overwhelming to me. Of course lately I’ve been preferring those piece counts because of physical limitations on the amount of time I’m able to puzzle; it’s not a reflection on Buffalo quality, which is quite good.
This puzzle was great fun, and the assembly was relatively quick. The Wysocki puzzles with only one building are a little more unique and therefore more enjoyable for me to do. I love the look of his artwork, but his regular folk/Americana puzzles all start to look the same to me and aren’t as interesting for me to assemble. This one was great with plenty of interesting parts to find and put together and a lovely finished image.
What makes a great puzzle image is so subjective, everyone enjoys something different. That’s what’s so great about puzzling! There are so many companies and so many artists that you’re bound to find something that jumps out at you and begs to be assembled. For me this was a great image with wonderful quality and I definitely recommend it!
My Jigsaw Journal 