Category: Jigsaw Puzzles

Orca Sunrise

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Orca Sunrise – MicroPuzzles – 150 pieces

My daughter fell in love with this image when she saw it, but she never actually wanted to help with the assembly for some reason. I know she tried a couple of times, but was frustrated with the difficulty. Still, it’s beautiful artwork and was quite entertaining to assemble.

You can see in the above picture that the fit was very good, as was the all around quality – as is usual for MicroPuzzles. There’s something about working with these little puzzles that is so satisfying for me, though I still struggle to explain why that is. I don’t really need to spell it out though, as long as they remain fun to assemble that’s all I really need. 😊

Pet Shop

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

Pet Shop by Eric Dowdle – Dowdle Puzzles – 300 pieces

This 300 piece puzzle was surprisingly difficult, and although the finished image looks as if it would be easy to pick out certain sections – it wasn’t! Almost every piece looked quite blue, and it went much more slowly than usual for a puzzle with only 300 pieces.

Still, it was excellent quality, and I enjoyed the challenge of it. I normally don’t have to pay as much attention to minute details in a puzzle of this size – this one was packed with animals and cages, and you had to concentrate and focus intensely – it was lots of fun!

It’s been several years since I put together a Dowdle image, and even then it was on a MasterPieces puzzle, not the Dowdle brand. I find Eric Dowdle’s artwork to make for challenging puzzles no matter the piece count; but I love his symmetry, precision, and color choices even though the images themselves aren’t easy to assemble.

My last Dowdle brand puzzle was back in 2020, and reading back through it I found I was annoyed that there was only piece shape (even though Cats Around the World was a wonderfully fun image) – thankfully this one had a nice variety of shapes and was very good quality all around. My only issue was the very shiny finish; it made assembly under my artificial lighting difficult.

My son loved this little sign, it was the first thing he noticed when he looked at the box image. That husky looks like he’s staring down whatever animal or person he’s about to go after – those blue eyes are so disconcerting!

The rabbit just hanging out and casually holding onto his carrot made me smile, there’s something just so silly about it. 🐰🥕

My regular readers know I’m not much of a cat person at all, but I loved the names on this cage – Oscar and Tartar Sauce. Who do you think is the grumpy one in the back? My guess is that’s Oscar. For some reason that grumpy face and the name Tartar Sauce just don’t seem to go together.

There was a legend on the back of the poster as well, with a detail or two about each of the species featured in the image. Some of it was new information – and you know I love educational puzzles that teach me something. Did you know that some koi fish have a lifespan of over 200 years? Amazing!

But the most interesting fact I learned was given about hamsters. Many people know that animals are diurnal (active during the day) or nocturnal (active at night), and some are cathemeral (active during both daylight and darkness). There is a fourth classification though; some animals, like hamsters, are “crepuscular” – which means they are most active during the twilight hours. Perhaps it isn’t as interesting to you as it was to me, but I found it fascinating, and did a bit of research into it. There are 534 species that are crepuscular!

Sorry, got a little off track there…back to the puzzle. Pet Shop was an entertaining, difficult, very good quality puzzle with an image packed full of fun animals to find and assemble. I enjoyed it very much. 🧩💚

Scrabble

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Scrabble – Spin Master – 1000 pieces

Scrabble is one of my favorite board games, and it made for quite an entertaining puzzle too! The quality was a bit underwhelming; but having assembled Clue earlier in the year, my expectations were appropriately managed before I began. Even so, I enjoyed the assembly, and it was just about the perfect amount of challenge.

My beautiful daughter bought me this puzzle after I made the mistake of telling her about the board game puzzles from Spin Master that were exclusive to Target. She made it her mission to visit every Target near a friend’s house, her work, etc. to see how many she could find for me. Is she the sweetest girl or what? I’m a very lucky momma who raised a kind, thoughtful, generous daughter.💖

Back to the puzzle…the pieces are on the thinner side, but somewhat sturdy (there were a few problems with bent pieces); there are a good variety of piece shapes and the fit was good. The image reproduction is fuzzy in some places and crisp and clear in others, and the finish is shiny.

There wasn’t much that needed close up pictures in this image, but I took this one just because I like the look of it. I always loved pouring out the tiles when beginning a game, the little wooden pieces clacking against each other – I know, my weird brain again. I make no apologies. 😜

Overall I enjoyed this puzzle. It took forever to sort because a) I wasn’t feeling well, and b) I really didn’t feel like putting this one together. As you can probably guess my son picked out which puzzle I’d be assembling. But once it was sorted and the assembly began it went rather quickly. I started in the morning and was finished in the evening before bed. It was more entertaining than I thought and in the end I’m glad he picked this one out – it was fun!

It’s been forever since I’ve played Scrabble, even though it’s one of my favorites. No one in my family will play with me anymore. The way my weird brain works also makes it so that I’ve got a ton of odd words stored up there, and I’ve never lost a game. I don’t blame them though, if there was a game I always lost I wouldn’t want to play it either. I feel that way about strategy games, hubby kicks my a** every time and it’s so frustrating!

Hubby and I now just stick to games that usually have a small element of luck in them as well as skill or strategy; cards, yahtzee, etc. It’s more fun if we both always have a chance. 😊

Hello Kitty and Friends – Day 4

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Hello Kitty and Friends – RoseArt – approx. 125/500 pieces

And now we’ve come to the final day of the Hello Kitty puzzles; it’s two friends, and Miss Hello Kitty herself! I enjoyed putting these puzzles together, but if you ask me there’s so much white that they all seemed harder to assemble than they look.

The quality was pretty good actually, much better than the last set of these puzzles I assembled – the Peanuts gang. No missing pieces, no pieces still attached to each other by the backing paper, and a relatively good fit. The finish is quite shiny, but even under artificial lighting it wasn’t too difficult to work with.

It was difficult to get pictures though, as the backing is quite slippery. Because my puzzle board is covered with fabric most puzzles grip the fabric and stay put when I stand the board against the wall to get good pictures with no glare from the artificial lighting. With the backing on these little puzzles, each one would just slide right down the board when I attempted to photograph them. That’s why quite a few of the images are at an angle, I couldn’t stand the board up at all.

And now, the final three characters…

Pochacco is a white dog with floppy black ears and a sporty, playful personality. He loves soccer, basketball, and skateboarding. Although he walks upright, Pochacco is clumsy and trips over himself quite a bit; this usually results in a head injury with an accumulation of bandages. He was born on February 29 (Leap Day) and lives in Airy Town.

Other than his red shirt, it was all black and white and not simple to assemble (even though it may look easy). Still, he’s a cute little guy, isn’t he?

Kuromi, whose name translates to “black beauty” in English, is a rabbit with a black jester’s hat with a pink skull; the skull’s facial expression apparently changes to match Kuromi’s mood. Her birthday is Halloween (October 31), which is fitting seeing that she also has a devil’s tail. She enjoys cooking and writing in her diary, and her favorite colors are black and hot pink.

This one wasn’t as difficult as the others to assemble, and it went together pretty quickly. With the placement of her eyelashes and that little smile, she looks as if she’s up to something, doesn’t she?

And last but certainly not least is Hello Kitty herself! She is a white Japanese Bobtail Cat who was born on November 1. Surprisingly she dislikes catnip, but she does enjoy baking cookies and collecting cute things, and she loves her Mama’s apple pie. (The backstory on her even tells us her blood type, if you can believe it – just….wow).

The clothes and hairbow made this one a little easier to assemble, but she’s got a very large, very white head! Good thing these puzzles were only a few pieces each, any larger and they wouldn’t have been much fun at all.

Overall this set of puzzles was enjoyable to assemble, but much more difficult than they look; the predominance of white with black lines made for a bit of a challenge even with only a few pieces per puzzle. Still, they are all adorable and were fun to assemble.

Hello Kitty and Friends – Day 3

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Hello Kitty and Friends – RoseArt – approx. 125/500 pieces

Two of these characters seem happy, one definitely does not. It’s almost funny the look on the penguin’s face – he looks so disgusted!

I had NO IDEA the Hello Kitty world had so many characters, it’s amazing how detailed all their stories are and just how many of them exist. It’s been quite the deep dive into this world of Sanrio (the world in which Miss Hello Kitty lives).

Badtz-Maru is a male penguin with spiky hair. His birthday is April 1 (April Fool’s Day). He is one of the few Sanrio characters that is marketed to both males and females. In Japanese, “badtz” is a term for “X”, the cross signifying a wrong answer. “Maru” means circle or “O”, and signifies a correct answer. Thus, his name figuratively means “wrong-correct,” and is frequently represented by “XO”. Badtz-Maru has many different facial expressions and poses, but a common expression is of pulling one eye down and sticking out his tongue, a gesture equivalent to blowing a raspberry.

He was mostly black and white, with a bit of yellow – and not the easiest of the puzzles to assemble. But once you get in the groove of these puzzles it isn’t too bad.

Cinnamoroll was born on March 6 on a cloud far up in the sky, and is a white and chubby puppy with long ears that enable him to fly. He has blue eyes, pink cheeks and a plump and curly tail that resembles a cinnamon roll. You can barely see his tail in this image, but I’m taking their word for it that it looks like a cinnamon roll.

With barely any color and the length of this one it had me confused for a little bit, and the way the border went together meant it wasn’t easy either. Still, I really enjoyed all of these little guys.

Little Twin Stars is what these two are called; the boy is Kiki and his sister is Lala. They were born on December 24 on Omoiyari Star in the Dream-Star Cloud. To learn how to be the shiniest, best stars they could be they traveled a long way to Earth. Kiki loves star fishing and inventing things, and Lala loves cooking, drawing, and writing poems.

This was the first of the puzzles that I put together, and it was one of the easiest for me even though it was the largest. They’re adorable little things, I enjoyed it very much.

One more day to go, and don’t worry, Hello Kitty herself will be there!