P****d as a Newt

On June 6, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

Alljigsawpuzzles.com is where I purchase most of my European made puzzles, you can click that link to check them out. Their prices are excellent, the shipping is VERY fast and shipping is free when you order $75 worth of puzzles. (Getting free shipping usually isn’t something I have to worry about 😉 )

Lately I’ve been trying to order at least one puzzle from a company I haven’t tried before every time I place an order. I’ve been looking at these Party Animals by Mike Jupp and wanting to try them but I didn’t have any idea what the quality would be like. I’ve never seen a puzzle store/distributor that also sells their own puzzles. Interesting! This Party Animals collection finally tipped the scales for me and I jumped in with both feet and just ordered them all – there was a special. Normally I would only order one from a new company so I can check out the quality before I lay down any more cash. But these puzzles were too adorable and funny (and on sale if you bought all 4) so I went for it. I make no apologies. 😎

I was very impressed with the quality! The image reproduction is gorgeous – bright and sharp with a matte finish that feels good in your hands. The pieces are about the same thickness as Heye puzzles, and sturdy too, with a nice variety of piece shapes. They fit together well and the piece shapes aren’t glaringly obvious in the finished puzzle. I’m glad I bought them all and can’t wait to do the other three Party Animals. They have Drunk as a Skunk, Blind as a Bat, and High as a Kite. Drunken animals everywhere!

I enjoyed this puzzle very much and I would definitely recommend it. Mike Jupp’s artwork is crisp and funny and detailed, and just a great puzzle image. Butterflies, lily pads and liquor bottles everywhere break up the water and greenery and the assembly was never tedious. Loved it! 🙂

Legendary Landmarks

On June 5, 2017June 5, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Another fun thrift store find! Circular puzzle with the top in the center and the bottom around the entire circumference , so every seat around the puzzle is a good one. 🙂

I like the concept of this puzzle brand, they make round table puzzles like this one and 4 fronts puzzles where the bottom is around the entire edge. According to their website “Now everyone gets the best seat around the puzzle”. They have some beautiful round and square puzzles, and a whole range of educational geography puzzles as well.

The quality was quite good – the pieces were sturdy and feel thick with a good variety of shapes, the image reproduction was very nice with no image lift, and the fit was excellent. I was pretty impressed with the quality and am always happy when I find another company whose puzzles I’m happy to do!

This was a fun puzzle that mom and I did together. It was easy to pick out pieces for one or two landmarks and turn the puzzle so that we were each working on the one in front of us. It took us only one afternoon to complete and it was very entertaining. I love it when a thrift store puzzle makes us happy and we get to spend time together working on a puzzle. ❤

The Pet Parlour

On June 4, 2017June 4, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

Pamela runs The Pampered Pooch Parlour, but she dreams of diversifying and branching out to bigger and better things. What If her dream became reality, would things go wild? What would her shop look like then? This is what you have to puzzle in Ravensburger’s What If #6 The Pet Parlour.

If you read this blog regularly you know I love Ravensburger puzzles and that their quality is excellent. This puzzle is no different. It’s nice after working other puzzles to start a puzzle you know is going to be good and whose quality you don’t have to worry about – it’s like coming home. It makes me happy. And yes, I know, I need to get out more. 😐

This puzzle looked like fun to me, and it was even more fun than I thought it would be! I really enjoyed it very much, and of all the What If puzzles I’ve done so far (1-6) I would say this one is definitely my favorite! The concept is funny, the artwork is exceptional and it makes for a wonderful puzzle. If you’re not sure about the What If concept and you want to try it out, start with #6 – it’s tons of fun. 🙂

Dog’s Life

On June 3, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

I can’t take the credit for this one, mom did the bulk of the assembly, I only assisted. We started it together and got about 25 percent done on a Friday when I went to visit. Then at our next Friday visit I helped her finish probably the last couple hundred pieces – mostly sky. She did most of the work during the week.

That being said, this puzzle was great fun! There were so many little jokes to find with what all those fleas were doing. Marino Degano’s cartoons are full of humor – most of the time “adult” humor – which I adore. 😇 This puzzle has lots of tongue in cheek humor and made mom and I laugh and point things out to each other while working on it. We especially liked that there was a puzzle store on the dog, and a couple of fleas were coming out of it with a Heye Dog’s Life puzzle!

I’ve got a 4000 piece Degano puzzle that I have yet to assemble full of tongue in cheek humor and lots of naughty bits – this puzzle made me want to get the big board back out and start working on that one.

I love the posters you get with the Heye triangular boxes, it makes it much easier to work on a puzzle with more than one person. It’s also fun to just sit and look at the poster before you start working to see all the funny stuff there is to see, or make a plan as to how you’re going to work the puzzle.

This puzzle had the usual Heye quality – excellent! The only drawback I find with their puzzles is the somewhat loose fit. It’s not too terrible if you’re working on a fabric covered board because the pieces do not move around accidentally unless you bump them pretty good with an arm or hand. But if you’re working on a table or other smooth surface it’s more difficult to deal with. Otherwise I love this brand. The pieces are extremely sturdy, they fit together so that you’ll know if you’ve placed a piece wrongly. I’ve never had to deal with any image lift at all, the image reproduction is gorgeous, and they have one of the best catalogs around – especially for cartoon puzzles.

I would definitely recommend this puzzle, it’s about medium difficulty as there is a bit of sky – but there are clouds and different shades to help find the correct piece. The artwork is wonderfully cute and funny and a little bit naughty which makes for a great puzzle in my book!

Meet The Imaginaries

On June 1, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

I absolutely love this artwork! Mom found this one at the thrift store, and I couldn’t wait to get started on it. I love the artwork by Philip Straub, it grabbed me as soon as I saw it. A new company too, so I was extra excited to get started!

I wish I had good news to report about the quality, but I was underwhelmed by it. I was hoping for at least a fair quality puzzle because there are a couple other puzzles by the same artist that I would love to do. But unfortunately – not so much. There was quite a bit of image lift on the pieces, and also the image was actually scraping off in places. The pieces were thick enough, but they way they fit together was odd. The best way I can describe it was “spongy”. It was not always obvious when you got a piece connected wrong, and how they fit together was kind of soft and spongy. Sometimes it felt like the piece was where it was supposed to be when it wasn’t in the right place.

You can see that the bottom half of the puzzle is quite dark, and boy oh boy did it get difficult once the brighter parts were done! I actually had a great time assembling the top part of the puzzle in spite of the quality; but once all the brighter bits were finished the dark stuff took a while and I really had to concentrate. I still enjoyed the puzzle overall but the quality left a lot to be desired.

The title of this puzzle is Meet The Imaginaries, can you see them hiding in there? There are quite a few of them, and they look pretty shy – poor things! Interesting note, the name of the puzzle was nowhere on the box! The back of the box had a picture and small blurb about the artist, but nowhere did it tell me the name of the puzzle I was doing. It told me the name of the series of puzzles he’d done, but not the puzzle inside that box. I had to look it up online.

I enjoyed this puzzle, but wish the quality had been better. Still, I can’t really complain about a thrift store puzzle – what a blessing it is to be able to buy most of our puzzles that way! I really do appreciate everyone who donates puzzles, and most of the ones we buy we donate back once we’ve done them. Every now and then we find an amazing puzzle that was fun to do and we keep those. 🙂