A New Bad Boy In Town!

On June 2, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

the-new-biggest-puzzle-in-the-world-travel-around-the-world-jigsaw-puzzle-48000-pieces-59033-1-fs — The New World’s Largest Puzzle!

Well look what I found wandering the web looking at jigsaw puzzles! This new puzzle is manufactured by a French company – Grafika, will be available in September of 2017, and will be 48,000 pieces!! 😮 I was sure Educa would be the next world’s largest! It seems I’m rarely right about anything these days. If my math is correct the price of this bad boy is 510 US dollars (395.99 British Pounds) Oh my.

The new puzzle is called Travel Around the World, and represents countries on every continent. The completed puzzle will measure 26.77 x 6.30 feet (8.16 x 1.92 meters). Apparently the puzzle will be delivered in a wooden box with wheels to haul the 55 pounds (25kg) of puzzle pieces! There are 24 separate bags of 2000 pieces each. It also comes with 2 posters of the puzzle image, and a poster showing a map of the world with the locations of the individual puzzle images.

The purists will say it’s not really a 48,000 piece puzzle unless you mix all the bags. I’m sure the purists are lovely people, but they should also try not to stomp on the feelings of others who might enjoy doing large piece puzzles in sections. Just my opinion. I say, if it makes you happy to mix the bags, go for it. I also say, if you want to do the puzzle in sections and still say you’ve completed the puzzle, go for it, and way to go! When my 40,320 piece puzzle is all laid out and connected I would like for someone to try and say something snarky about how I didn’t REALLY put together a 40,320 piece puzzle. I walk with a cane. It’s sturdy, and metal. Just saying. 😇

I’ve never heard of or tried Grafika, and haven’t seen any reviews of their puzzles either. Makes me want to get at least one of their puzzles to try it out and see what I think of the brand. Has anyone else tried this brand? I’d love to hear from you if you have.

I gotta admit, I’m super tempted! I still have 2 weeks to go before we assemble the current World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle and I know once I see it all laid out like that it’s gonna make me want to do the next one too! I should just cool my heels, find a Grafika puzzle and try it out and see how I feel about it, right?

I like the look of this one too! Help! I think I may have a problem. I still have no idea what’s going to happen to the Disney puzzle. *sigh*

Meet The Imaginaries

On June 1, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

I absolutely love this artwork! Mom found this one at the thrift store, and I couldn’t wait to get started on it. I love the artwork by Philip Straub, it grabbed me as soon as I saw it. A new company too, so I was extra excited to get started!

I wish I had good news to report about the quality, but I was underwhelmed by it. I was hoping for at least a fair quality puzzle because there are a couple other puzzles by the same artist that I would love to do. But unfortunately – not so much. There was quite a bit of image lift on the pieces, and also the image was actually scraping off in places. The pieces were thick enough, but they way they fit together was odd. The best way I can describe it was “spongy”. It was not always obvious when you got a piece connected wrong, and how they fit together was kind of soft and spongy. Sometimes it felt like the piece was where it was supposed to be when it wasn’t in the right place.

You can see that the bottom half of the puzzle is quite dark, and boy oh boy did it get difficult once the brighter parts were done! I actually had a great time assembling the top part of the puzzle in spite of the quality; but once all the brighter bits were finished the dark stuff took a while and I really had to concentrate. I still enjoyed the puzzle overall but the quality left a lot to be desired.

The title of this puzzle is Meet The Imaginaries, can you see them hiding in there? There are quite a few of them, and they look pretty shy – poor things! Interesting note, the name of the puzzle was nowhere on the box! The back of the box had a picture and small blurb about the artist, but nowhere did it tell me the name of the puzzle I was doing. It told me the name of the series of puzzles he’d done, but not the puzzle inside that box. I had to look it up online.

I enjoyed this puzzle, but wish the quality had been better. Still, I can’t really complain about a thrift store puzzle – what a blessing it is to be able to buy most of our puzzles that way! I really do appreciate everyone who donates puzzles, and most of the ones we buy we donate back once we’ve done them. Every now and then we find an amazing puzzle that was fun to do and we keep those. 🙂

Jigsaw Puzzle for Dummies – Noah’s Ark

On May 31, 2017July 14, 2023 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles1 Comment

Noah’s Ark by Eric Dowdle – TDC Games (Jigsaw Puzzles for Dummies) – 1000 pieces

It was purely coincidence that right after I finished Noah’s Ark by Jean-Jacques Loup that mom found this Noah’s Ark by Eric Dowdle at the thrift store. Maybe someone is trying to tell me something – I hope it means rain is coming because we’re having a bit of a drought down here!

Interesting concept for this puzzle, the box looks like the “For Dummies” books and each pieces is alphanumerically numbered on the back. There is also a small instruction booklet that comes in the box to explain the steps of how to assemble a jigsaw puzzle, along with a map on the back to show you where each piece should go.

There are plenty of ways for those people who haven’t done jigsaw puzzles before to get the instruction and help they need to complete a 1000 piece puzzle. Or, if you are already a puzzler you can disregard the map and the numbers and just assemble it as you would any other puzzle – the choice is yours! Like it says on the box “you decide the level of difficulty”.

The quality of this puzzle was very good. The pieces were thick and sturdy and fit together well; the image reproduction was very nice and there was no image lift on any of the pieces. Very good all around quality!

Eric Dowdle’s artwork is compelling to me. There’s something about the symmetry of his pieces and the clean lines – I can’t put my finger on exactly why I like it so much but I like it very much. 😍 It does make for a more difficult puzzle sometimes but there’s fun in the extra challenge. At least I think so. There’s a bit of humor in this puzzle too, you’ll find a pair of unicorns boycotting the ark with placards that say “heck no we won’t go”, a traffic cop for the large animals, and even a polar bear with sunglasses and a beverage!

I did attempt to assemble the puzzle the “dummies” way, first by only using the numbers to do all of a few rows, and then by using the numbers to pull all the pieces for one row but then flipping the pieces over and putting the row together without the numbers. For me it takes the sense of accomplishment away – I just read letters and numbers and put them in order. There’s no fun in that for me, but I wanted to try it that way to get a sense of the brand. If it helps you and you learn to do jigsaws that way I’m all for it; assemble it whichever way makes you happy!

If you find a for dummies puzzle that you like, don’t be put off by the dummies part; the quality is very good – I say go for it. 🙂

Biking

On May 30, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Another one bites the dust. I was hoping that this puzzle was all there, because I knew my grandson would love it – he loves Mickey Mouse. Bummer!

This is one of the better Mega Puzzles we’ve found. The pieces were quite sturdy, the image is bright and colorful, and they fit together very well.

Oh well, he’s got plenty of other puzzles to work on, and there are still a bunch of them in my car to be delivered if I ever feel well enough to go visit. Unfortunately this was a no go, I don’t want to give him a puzzle with missing pieces. 😦

Slumber Party!

On May 29, 2017December 29, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

Why can’t grandpa get some rest? What in the world is going on while everyone else is asleep? You’ll be surprised when you puzzle the answer. 🙂

Another awesome Wasgij by Jumbo, with excellent artwork by Neil Easton. The box shows a crazy evening at home with everyone getting ready for bed, crying children, barking dog, etc. You must imagine what the scene looks like a couple of hours from then – what is going on and what has woken grandpa? I thought I had it figured out pretty quickly, but it turns out I was only half right. 😦 I usually get it early, but this one stumped me a little bit!

Jumbo quality is some of the best there is. It’s right up there with Ravensburger in my opinion; and in some areas I think Jumbo beats Ravensburger. They’re both at the top of my list, we’ll call it a tie.

This puzzle was quite fun, and I really enjoyed the assembly which is no surprise. Cartoon puzzle?- check, Jumbo quality? – check, Mystery picture? – check, Awesome puzzle play time? – double check!