Author: Stacey at myjigsawjournal

Space Flare

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Space Flare – Wentworth – 80 pieces

This Mini Mindful puzzle from Wentworth sure does make a person slow down and focus completely on the puzzling – of course I loved it!

The repetitive tessellating pieces made for a challenging but fantastic assembly; the geometric shapes were so fun to work with. The “extra difficult” puzzles from Wentworth are very entertaining, and even in such small sizes give your gray matter a little bit of a workout!

As usual the puzzle itself is beautifully made, an excellent quality puzzle all around. You can see from the picture above the stunning image reproduction. Gorgeous 😍

Once I put together the obviously easier sections (shown above), the difficulty level ramped up significantly. We worked on it in the bathroom for a while, you can also see in the picture above how the light is much poorer than it is in the puzzle room.

My daughter came over to visit and while sitting in the puzzle room with me she asked my son to bring out whatever puzzle was in the bathroom so she and I could work on it together. At first she was NOT happy about which puzzle was there, she was hoping to work on Casual Friday but hubby and I had already finished that one. She was a trooper though and got into it after a few minutes, eventually we had a great time working on it together. I love that she wants to work on puzzles with me when she’s here. 💕

There are quite a few more Mini Mindful puzzles here to be done, and after seeing how entertaining this puzzle was I am very much looking forward to the next ones!

Tranquil Waters In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling2 Comments

Tranquil Waters – Tuco – 408 pieces

I made a fantastic find at the thrift store this week – this amazing Tuco puzzle that was manufactured in 1958! I’ve never had the opportunity to work on one of these puzzles before, and I’m so amazingly thrilled to have found it.

The image isn’t anything like I would normally choose, but the very old box caught my eye. It doesn’t tell you a piece count, only that there are “approx. 425 to 990 Tuco king-size puzzle parts” and it also says it is a “100% Interlocking Picture Puzzle”; there was also the word complete handwritten on the front of the box. Well, I was intrigued. I’ve seen Tuco puzzles in other blogs or on resale sites but for the most part they were all puzzles whose pieces just push together and I usually just find that frustrating.

My mother and I developed a system for thrift store puzzle shopping – mostly for brands with quality that can be questionable. We always had a small pair of scissors or something sharp in our purses along with a small roll of clear tape. When a puzzle from a questionable brand was in a taped up box we could open it, check out the pieces to see if it was something we might want to assemble and tape it back up if necessary.

I still do this when shopping for puzzles at thrift stores and I opened this puzzle box to check out the pieces, to say I was stunned would be an understatement! The pieces are the thickest I’ve ever seen for a cardboard puzzle, they put Ravensburger and Pomegranate to shame…

That’s a piece from Ravensburger on the left, and a pre-pandemic Pomegranate on the right – the pieces of this Tuco puzzle are as thick or thicker than some wooden puzzles I’ve worked! (I think when I write up the post for this completed puzzle I’ll show pieces from premium cardboard brands along with wooden puzzle brands for comparison.)

Once I saw the thickness of the pieces, and that most of them had tabs that fit into other pieces there was NO WAY I wasn’t buying this puzzle. As an added bonus the color on the price tag was the “color of the week”, so it was half price, which means I paid $1.50 for this amazing find!

The image is mostly a dark landscape with lots of green and a pond or river in the foreground with even more green, but it doesn’t matter. It’s such an amazing puzzle to have found at the thrift store, and I am extremely excited to assemble it! 😍

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Cardinal – 48 pieces

My youngest son decided it was time for me to put together one of my kids puzzles that have been hanging out at the bottom of my puzzle shelves way in the back – and of course he chose TMNT. He tells me this is from the 2012 version of the show, in case anyone was wondering. 🐢

*In case you were wondering if I was wondering – I wasn’t. But he loves to talk about the things he’s interested in, and I’m his mother, so I listen.*

In addition to providing all the information I learned about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he even helped out with the assembly right from the beginning! I’m sure the fact that it was only 48 pieces was a consideration, but he was genuinely excited about this puzzle and I was happy to have his assistance.

I was quite impressed with the quality of this puzzle, it came in a 6 pack of kids puzzles of varying piece counts (all from Nickelodeon shows) that I paid $1.49 for. I was expecting much lesser quality, but was happily surprised that the pieces were thick and fit together well, and the image reproduction was very good.

It was a bargain at even twice the price. Cowabunga dudes!

Ice Cream Bars

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Ice Cream Bars by Charlie Girard – White Mountain – 1000 pieces

Here’s another puzzle that I was very much looking forward to, but it had very disappointing quality. It’s been a while since I’ve done a White Mountain puzzle, and they can be hit or miss – this one was a miss, unfortunately. I wanted to enjoy this, and I did – just not as much as I’d hoped. Oh well.

The image reproduction on this was was quite blurry in some places, and there were quite a few pieces not cut all the way through. The fit was good, not as tight as some WM puzzles can be, but good. The chipboard was a good thickness, and the finish was a bit shiny, but not too much so; it was mainly the reproduction that caused me so much trouble.

So let’s look at some of these ice cream bars and wrappers up close…

Apparently sex sells, even ice cream bars.

I wanted to show the difference in clarity – the Dairy Queen cup is quite clear and the surrounding wrappers were quite muddled and blurry up close – I’m not sure I was able to capture it in the picture though. Perhaps the artist used actual vintage wrappers or pictures of them and they’re just what they looked like. I can’t be sure, but it was frustrating to have some of the image be so blurry in places.

Six Klondike bars for $1.49? Wow. Just wow. And you can also see in this picture that the words are quite clear and the image of the boy and the ice cream bars is fuzzy and indistinct.

The overall quality of this puzzle was quite a letdown; I was hoping for an entertaining collage with good quality that I could just relax and enjoy – this puzzle wasn’t it. ☹

Clue In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling27 Comments

Clue – Spin Master – 1000 pieces

I just finished sorting this morning and quickly put together the logo that goes in the middle – and I got all the pieces on the initial sort – way to go me!

The quality is less impressive than I was hoping for; the pieces are thin, the fit is very loose and there are a LOT of bent pieces. It’s quite different than Harmony Harbor by the same brand that I just posted about two days ago. That puzzle had quite a few bent pieces as well, but the chipboard was thicker, the finish was matte instead of shiny and the fit was very good.

According to the blog this is my first 1000 piece puzzle by this brand, and unfortunately so far I’m underwhelmed.

Apparently this is one of a series of six puzzles with images of classic board games, the others are Guess Who?, Monopoly, Battleship, Life, and Scrabble. They aren’t available online other than on resale sites; you can only get them in-store at Target and they seem to be extremely difficult to get. I wasn’t aware of any of this when I purchased it, and honestly I’m finding it quite frustrating just trying to get any information about this puzzle and/or the series.

Here’s hoping the assembly is less exasperating than the search for info about the puzzle itself. Fingers crossed!🤞