Night Owls Study Group by Karen Burke – MasterPieces – 300 pieces
Is this not an adorable image? My son and I loved all the nerd/geek references – being a professed and proud professional puzzle geek myself I am part of that community. Nerds rock!
This puzzle had a rather odd fit that I’m having trouble finding the words to describe. It almost seemed loose when you connected some pieces together, but it is not a loose fit at all. The fit felt “off”, is the best way I can describe it. The pieces didn’t lay flat either, which is not a problem I can ever recall having with a MasterPieces puzzle.
It was like this all over the puzzle – almost like they were warped. Very odd indeed. And then, for a puzzle with and odd fit that feels loose but isn’t and whose pieces did not lay flat…check this out!
I’m telling ya, this was one of the most bizarre fitting puzzles I’ve ever done – and believe me I’ve done a LOT of puzzles!
Pixels & Pizza by Aimee Stewart – Buffalo – 1000 pieces
Well, sort of in progress. I’m still sorting it – and that’s a start, right? 1000 piece puzzles take a lot longer for me to sort these days; I get so antsy to start assembling and want nothing more than to be done with sorting, so I take frequent breaks. In the back of my mind, I know that if I get the sorting done that I’ll be happier with the assembly so I keep slogging through it little bits at a time.
I’m very excited to start working on this image; there are SO MANY words, it’s got a fabulous 80s feel to it, and the colors are so bright and bold – it’s gonna be a great time – I can tell!
Burn It & Outback Footy by Sue Janson – Mr. Bob Puzzles – 40 pieces
I love both of these images, although I think the Outback Footy side might be a bit of a challenge in a larger piece count – there’s a lot of brown in that one. This is another of the acrylic puzzles from Mr. Bob that I was sent to try out, and I loved both of them!
I wanted to assemble and write up a post about this as soon as possible so I wouldn’t forget to tell y’all something that had completely slipped my mind. While cleaning out my old emails and reading through some of them I came across a request Mr. Bob had for me regarding these acrylic puzzles – he asked me to run them through the dishwasher! 🧼
The puzzle you see above has been through a cycle of my dishwasher, and it emerged completely unscathed! This was buried in my old lady brain, I didn’t remember it at all until I was going through my emails. Mr. Bob wanted to show that these puzzles would last a lifetime, and through whatever punishment a person could throw at it. He told me he’d put one of the puzzles through a cycle of his washing machine (for clothes) and it came through with flying colors.
When I asked him if there were any other tortures he wanted me to inflict on these little beauties – in the name of puzzle science, of course – he asked if we had a cement mixer available! 🤣
It’s too bad they don’t seem to be going forward with their acrylic line, I think they’d have been excellent puzzles. They certainly would last for more than a lifetime.
After assembling this puzzle I did suggest that if they were going to produce the acrylic puzzles that it may be better to only make shapes with the whimsy pieces and not cut the extra lines into them. You can see from the pictures above and below that the extra lines cut into them make it more difficult to see the image underneath – at least that’s how it was for these aging eyes.
It would have been better to turn these over to the “Burn It” side so you could see in the milkshake that it’s more difficult to read the words underneath. But you can still see that the extra lines distort the image. If you can’t tell from the image at the top of the page, the sign on the ice cream cart says “Burn It to Earn It” – you gotta chase it to taste it apparently. That way you can burn off some calories before you take in more. 🍦🏃♀️
I had a wonderful time trying out these puzzles – love that you get two for the price of one, and appreciate just how sturdy and long-lasting they truly are.
*And I’m a little sad that I didn’t get the chance to try one of the larger 500 piece acrylic puzzles that they were working on. Mr. Bob was going to send me one to review – that would have been an amazing puzzle to assemble!*
The blocks and shapes of color in this image made for such a fun assembly – absolutely loved this one! As an added bonus my daughter helped me finish this one when she came to spend some time with me following my surgery, puzzling with my loved ones always makes me happy. 💕
I was about halfway through the assembly before I realized that the image spells out “love” in an abstract way – well done Captain Obvious. Sigh.
This is one of the puzzles that came in my subscription box from MicroPuzzles in the summer of last year, Both puzzles are double-sided, and the reverse side is a line drawing of the color image on the front. The surprise gift in the box was a small set of paints, two small paintbrushes, and an easel to display your artwork once it’s been painted. So fun!
I didn’t paint anything, as you can see. I’m too much of a perfectionist, and deciding what color goes where and making sure I didn’t mess things up would be too much stress for me. My decision was to just enjoy the puzzle itself and forego the painting.
These mini puzzles are quite small, in this review of Stained Glass Tree you can see how small they are with something next to the completed puzzle for reference. I know that these little ones aren’t for everyone, but if they look like something you might enjoy they are highly recommended.
Even with my aging eyes I can still see well enough to work with these little pieces, and there’s something about putting the small puzzles together that is so satisfying. Can’t wait for this month’s subscription box to see what’s next!
Fun Fair Food by Lars Stewart – Buffalo – 300 pieces
There were several 300 piece puzzles I considered before choosing this one, it was the colors that decided it for me. It’s a Lars Stewart, so most likely it’s because it seemed as familiar as an Aimee Stewart. Thank goodness we have digital artists like the Stewarts and Ciro Marchetti to make us such colorful and entertaining images to puzzle!
There hasn’t been much work on this, but it got started because I needed some “me time” doing an actual puzzle in between writing up all the posts of the puzzles that we did on vacation.
My family and I assembled eight puzzles during our holiday; all I did was take pictures when they were complete. I’ve spent the past couple days writing up posts so I don’t forget any of the little things about the assemblies – my memory isn’t what it used to be – if I don’t get things written down now there will absolutely be forgotten details. But in this midst of typing up all those posts I felt the need to put my hands on an actual puzzle and fit some pieces together. 🧩💚
My Jigsaw Journal 