Category: Jigsaw Puzzles

Chosen One

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

Chosen One – Mega Puzzles (Multipack) – 150 pieces

Here’s another fun puzzle from my multipack I found at the thrift store. I’m not in love with all of the images included, but this movie has a special place in my heart and I like the look of this one. It was pretty awful quality, but still was fun to assemble. It’s so nice for me to work on a smaller piece count after finishing a larger puzzle, it feels like a palate cleanser.

Many of the pieces had this problem; the die didn’t cut all the way through, and when someone separated the pieces the paper gets torn. Once it’s torn it can leave paper sticking up like this which makes the piece lift up off of the board. Annoying.

This is another puzzle where I documented the assembly as I went along, with a smaller puzzle it’s over so quickly and the puzzle doesn’t really need closeups to show you certain parts of the image. It’s more fun to just see how it came together – at least I think it is.

Of course it got started with the words, they’re almost always my favorite part.

Sorry about the glare, I didn’t check the picture before I continued on with the assembly – and I should have. I’ll get better at it if I start doing more in progress assembly pictures. Although you can’t see him well Buzz is mostly finished here.

After Buzz was done I just grabbed all the pieces with blue/purple of the little green men/squeeze toy aliens; it’s just fun to go where the pieces take you, especially on a smaller puzzle. This one was really enjoyable.

Even though this was missing a piece it was still great fun to put together and I enjoyed it. This puzzle came from a multipack, so it may be that the wandering piece found it’s way into a small bag with a different puzzle – or it could be long gone. You never know. Still even with a missing piece this was entertaining and made me smile. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Life is an Open Book – Paris

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Life is an Open Book – Paris by Aimee Stewart – Buffalo – 1000 pieces

What a stunningly beautiful image, I had the best time with this puzzle! Of course we know that Aimee Stewart is my favorite puzzle artist, her images make for the most interesting, challenging, wonderful assembly experiences. I absolutely adore them, and this was even more fabulous than expected.

The Life is an Open Book series of puzzles has been out in the world for many years now, but I just got my hands on one of them very recently. What on Earth I was thinking waiting so long to try these out I have no idea – I can’t have been thinking very much at all. I want every single city in this series. Immediately! The quality was excellent, the image was fantastic, and the assembly was so challenging and relaxing at the same time. My little old lady’s puzzling heart is going pitter patter at the thought of collecting the remaining three cities. 💓

When I first saw this tiny little section of the puzzle, it made me smile. Of course I remember the horrible Chat Noir puzzle that mom and I put together – it was not much fun at all; but seeing this tiny representation of it made me think of her, which is lovely. We HATED this puzzle, and after assembling it we vowed to be more discerning before jumping in feet first whenever there was an image we loved; because they don’t all make for fun puzzling. Still, I have the memory of this puzzle intertwined with memories of mom and I working on it together, cussing and laughing and cheering each other on – of course it brings a smile to my face.

Fine Art puzzles are not really images I enjoy putting together, so this is most likely the last time you’ll see Ms. Lisa here on the blog. Still, I can now honestly say that I assembled an image of the Mona Lisa. 🖼

All the books, posters, and knick-knacks made for such entertaining assembling; lots of words, beautiful colors, many small things to discover and place in the image.

This artwork shows off the best of Aimee Stewart in my very humble opinion. You’ve got her shelves, lots of books, posters, bright colors, a collection of many disparate objects that all seem to work together perfectly to make a stunning piece of art. And it all fits together on a beautiful puzzle that is a joy to assemble – I couldn’t ask for more.

Other than the remaining cities in this series, of course.😉

Family Dinner

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles8 Comments

Family Dinner by Ed Wargo – Rose Art (Back to the Past) – 750 pieces

The Back to the Past series from Rose Art has some amazing artwork, and if this puzzle is any indication they make for challenging and wonderfully entertaining puzzling. This puzzle was a great time, and I don’t know where else a person can pay $2.99 and get hours and hours worth of amusement, enjoyment, relaxation, and distraction out of it. Adored this one!

Rose Art puzzles can be hit or miss in the quality department, and luckily this one was a hit. The very blocky grid cut pieces made for some false fits, but if I’d really been paying attention maybe I’d have realized my mistakes more quickly. The image reproduction is lovely, but the painterly style made some pieces look like blotchy blobs of color – it was the image itself though, not the reproduction. There were a good variety of pieces that fit together well and the chipboard was relatively thick and sturdy. Overall this was a good quality puzzle, and I was quite happy with it.

If any of you grew up in the 60s and 70s this might be a familiar looking thing – all the side dishes and casseroles. My mother had sooooo many casserole dishes, it was quite a thing at the time; the number of beautiful Corning Ware dishes she had was amazing, and I wish I had more of them here. We never had a giant roast like the one in this oven, we weren’t that well off (and honestly the number of little side dishes shown here for a family dinner seems a bit excessive to me) but the first thing I noticed in the oven were the two casserole dishes in the smaller left-hand oven. They immediately made me think of my mom. 💜

The first thing I put together was this refrigerator with all the wonderful little drawings on it. They were easy to pick out during the sorting, and it’s always fun to have something to assemble immediately after you put together the border.

I really had a good time with this assembly, and it’s making me want to get my butt back to the thrift store to see what other treasures I can find. This beauty has been sent on to Penny soon so she can assemble it too; when I texted her a picture of the puzzle I was doing she immediately asked if she could have it after I was done. Hope you love it my friend! 📦🧩

Secrets of the Deep

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles10 Comments

Secrets of the Deep by Steve Read – MasterPieces – 500 pieces

This puzzle was a joy – random shapes, beautiful colors, excellent fit – I absolutely adored it! Ocean images aren’t really my thing, but I wanted to clear out some of the older thrift store puzzles and this had the right piece count so I gave it a go. I’m so glad I did.

MasterPieces puzzles have always had good quality in my opinion, and this was one of the best quality puzzles of theirs that I can ever remember doing. The image reproduction is stunning, the fit was exceptional, the random shapes made the assembly wonderfully interesting, it was just an all around great puzzle. 💙

It can be interesting putting together a random cut like this where the “corners” of the pieces don’t meet – it can be all over the place. In my case it makes me slow down a bit and really pay attention to the connections and be sure to grab the right piece no matter if it’s tall or short or long or thin.

In addition to being an all around great puzzle this was also a glow in the dark puzzle with hidden images to find; Steve Read likes to hide things in his artwork. I found myself going back through the blog and looking at past puzzles with his artwork, and quite a few of them were ones with hidden images – there were hidden animals, hidden fairies, etc. Anyway, back to this puzzle, there are 16 hidden dolphins to find; can you see a pink dolphin in this coral (or whatever it is)?

The fit was very good, and I was able to get this stand up picture, but just barely. You can see the pieces are moving a bit, and immediately after I took this picture a piece fell out. I almost feel as though I shouldn’t be posting this picture because it wasn’t as good as previous puzzles that stood tall and proud with no pieces moving around. But I did capture the image, so why not?

As I mentioned before this was also a glow in the dark puzzle, and a thrift store purchase. Once it was finished and pictures were taken I took it outside to “charge” for 10 minutes or so in the sun. You can never tell with a thrift store puzzle if you’re gonna still be able to get a good glow out of it and I’ve found that putting it in direct sunlight for a few minutes helps.

Let me tell you, I got the best glow on a puzzle I have EVER seen, and the absolute best glow picture I have ever taken. Ready?….

It’s a little blurry on one side, I think I was so amazed by how well it was glowing that I moved a little when I was taking it. There was absolutely no manipulation of the image other than to crop it, this is actually what it looked like in the darkened room. Isn’t that a glorious GITD picture? I was so excited to capture such an excellent glow on this puzzle – I still am!

This was a fabulous puzzle with hidden images inside beautiful artwork on a puzzle with excellent quality. I absolutely recommend it; it made this little old puzzle lady very happy indeed. 👵

Life is a Box of Colors

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Life is a Box of Colors – Cra-Z-Art (Kodak) – 350 pieces

I had a really good time with this puzzle. And since I don’t remember the last Kodak puzzle that was put together, I didn’t know what kind of quality this might be; I was happy to find that it was a very good quality puzzle that was also truly a joy to assemble.

For some reason I decided I was going to pick puzzles based on piece count and go upwards to 1000 pieces. One day I did both 150 and 200 piece puzzles, so of course the next one had to be 300 pieces. I thought I’d jump to 500 pieces after that, but when I looked through the shelves in my closet I was surprised to see I had a couple of 350 piece puzzles, and obviously this one jumped right out at me with it’s bright, beautiful colors.

The pieces were thick with a good variety of shapes. It’s one of those puzzles that has fat pieces and thin pieces, you can tell when you start assembling the border; the thinner, shorter pieces make up the side borders and the fatter, taller ones are the top and bottom borders. The finish was quite shiny, and I did most of the assembly without my overhead light on because there was just too much glare to deal with. The image reproduction was gorgeous, of course, look at those “kodak colors”! The fit was quite tight, almost like a Springbok or certain Sunsout puzzles – I’m not a fan of this type of fit, but at least it wasn’t loose, right?

Assembling words makes me so happy, of course this was the first section to be completed. Isn’t it a stunningly gorgeous image? Love it!

Did I mention something about an extremely tight fit? Oh yeah, I did! In fact, I was so sure that this was going to work that I stood the puzzle on it’s edge first, before I got any pictures of the completed puzzle. That can be a risk if you’re not sure, but I knew there wouldn’t be any problems with this one.

I absolutely loved this assembly. Much of it was put together when I was on the phone with my daughter, I just sat talking and absentmindedly finding pieces and putting them in. When I look at this puzzle that will be what I remember, talking to my baby girl and putting together a beautiful puzzle. 💖