Cats Selfie

On July 29, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

This is a cute puzzle, I enjoyed the bright colors. I’m not a cat person, but the looks on their faces are so funny! I don’t know many cats that would tolerate wearing Santa hats though, do you?

As usual, this was fun to put together. Wentworth quality is very very good, and working with wooden puzzles gives you a completely different tactile experience than with cardboard puzzles. They’re more expensive, but I say we puzzlers are absolutely worth it! Even if you don’t get to work a large piece count wooden puzzle, these micro puzzles are relatively inexpensive; and they’re puzzles you’ll want to do over and over again.

The piece shapes are obvious in the finished image, but to be honest this doesn’t matter at all to me. The enjoyment of the assembly for me outweighs pretty much any of the negatives, although I don’t think there are that many negatives. That’s just my personal opinion of course, but I’m a tiny bit addicted to jigsaw puzzles of all kinds so my opinions are a bit compromised.

More cute whimsies, I love the Santa with his sack of presents – it’s so detailed! The stocking full of presents is pretty damn cute as well.

My brain hasn’t been working well lately, and it just occurred to me this morning that there are 3 days left in the month. I have today’s micro puzzle and 2 more to go, so it looks like you’re going to have to put up with 2 more days in a row of Christmas/winter micro puzzles. Sorry, I’m blaming all the new pharmaceuticals I’m having to take – and the increasing dosages – that’s my story anyway. 💊💊

Butterflies II

On July 28, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

These beautiful shaped puzzles are such fun for me to put together, and even though I have 9 of the series there are still a few that I don’t have and would love to get my hands on.

The colors on these butterflies are absolutely gorgeous and they were interesting to assemble. Unlike the cupcakes and shoes that I’ve already assembled, these were of varying sizes and shapes. The smallest of the butterflies had only 8 pieces, and the largest had 52 pieces! It was quite an entertaining assembly, and I can’t stress enough how stunning the colors are, they are so beautiful. 🦋

Each butterfly was delightful to see and put together, the varying sizes made sure that each was not a cookie cutter of the same shapes. The colors were bright, and the fit was very good. All in all I had a great time with this puzzle.

These are two of my favorites, although I had a hard time choosing only a few. All of them were interesting, challenging, beautiful, and fun!

I Found It!

On July 27, 2018July 27, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

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This is Pattern 1, I’ve been looking for it for months, and mom and I finally happened upon it at Tuesday Morning!

I’ve already assembled Pattern 3 and Pattern 4, and loved every moment of putting them together. I don’t know what happened to Pattern 2, I can’t even find an image of it online. Perhaps it was never made into a puzzle, or possibly they love to keep us guessing by just skipping a number and making us crazy trying to find it. All I know is I’m thrilled we found this one!

I haven’t touched a puzzle piece for 2 days now, but hopefully today I’ll feel well enough to start puzzling again. I’ve gotta catch up and get some puzzles done, I’m running out of puzzles to post! 😱

Holiday Parade

On July 26, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

I didn’t want to like this puzzle, but honestly I had a really good time assembling it. Even though all the pieces were what I call “ballerinas” it was an entertaining puzzle to put together.

This is the 3rd Briarpatch puzzle I’ve assembled, and all 3 had differing levels of quality. I wonder why it is that some companies seem to have no consistency in the quality of their puzzles? Perhaps they have particular manufacturers for various puzzles; I can’t really say. What I will say is that it’s disappointing at times, if I’ve done one of their better quality puzzles and feel confident purchasing another – I end up becoming discouraged by the inconsistency.

The quality of this particular Briarpatch was fair to middlin’ (technical term 🙂 ) The pieces were a good thickness and the fit was excellent – you could pick up the entire puzzle from just the middle and nothing came apart. Unfortunately that’s where the good ends; there was no variety in piece shape at all, the image reproduction was fuzzy in places, and the finished puzzle did not lay flat.

At first glance it doesn’t really look like a Christmas puzzle with Uncle Sam and the giant clown balloons, but once you take a second look there are wreaths everywhere and Santa is in the parade. By the way, why on Earth is Santa sitting on a giant swan atop his sleigh? I find that a little odd. Is that just me?

Not being a fan of Christmas puzzles, and having only fair quality you’d think this would be a puzzle I wouldn’t have enjoyed. I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it either, in fact I didn’t want to enjoy it – it just didn’t look like a fun puzzle to me. Turns out, I had a great time with it in spite of myself. 👍🎄

Interconnection

On July 25, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

This puzzle is the last in a series of 3 by Richard Welker, all the images were so much fun to assemble! I love the look of all of them, and all three made for excellent puzzling. (Sorry about the glare, I usually do a better job with the pictures)

The quality was fair, but how I wish it were better! The board is made of many layers of board, and right out of the box some pieces were split and peeling. Why can’t Ceaco up the quality even just a little bit? They have some fantastic images, but the quality is great on one puzzle and terrible on another. The image reproduction was very good, as was the fit; but the quality of the chipboard used is a major component with puzzles, and it’s hard to ignore when it’s bad. 😦

These images by Richard Welker are eye-catching and interesting, and I bought them knowing the quality might be less than optimal. I’m not sorry I did, the image made up for a lot. There’s one more image by this artist that I’ve found, it’s not in the same series, but it’s been produced by Ceaco/Brainwright….

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