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. 🙂

Jigsaw Puzzle for Dummies – Noah’s Ark

On May 31, 2017July 14, 2023 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles1 Comment

Noah’s Ark by Eric Dowdle – TDC Games (Jigsaw Puzzles for Dummies) – 1000 pieces

It was purely coincidence that right after I finished Noah’s Ark by Jean-Jacques Loup that mom found this Noah’s Ark by Eric Dowdle at the thrift store. Maybe someone is trying to tell me something – I hope it means rain is coming because we’re having a bit of a drought down here!

Interesting concept for this puzzle, the box looks like the “For Dummies” books and each pieces is alphanumerically numbered on the back. There is also a small instruction booklet that comes in the box to explain the steps of how to assemble a jigsaw puzzle, along with a map on the back to show you where each piece should go.

There are plenty of ways for those people who haven’t done jigsaw puzzles before to get the instruction and help they need to complete a 1000 piece puzzle. Or, if you are already a puzzler you can disregard the map and the numbers and just assemble it as you would any other puzzle – the choice is yours! Like it says on the box “you decide the level of difficulty”.

The quality of this puzzle was very good. The pieces were thick and sturdy and fit together well; the image reproduction was very nice and there was no image lift on any of the pieces. Very good all around quality!

Eric Dowdle’s artwork is compelling to me. There’s something about the symmetry of his pieces and the clean lines – I can’t put my finger on exactly why I like it so much but I like it very much. 😍 It does make for a more difficult puzzle sometimes but there’s fun in the extra challenge. At least I think so. There’s a bit of humor in this puzzle too, you’ll find a pair of unicorns boycotting the ark with placards that say “heck no we won’t go”, a traffic cop for the large animals, and even a polar bear with sunglasses and a beverage!

I did attempt to assemble the puzzle the “dummies” way, first by only using the numbers to do all of a few rows, and then by using the numbers to pull all the pieces for one row but then flipping the pieces over and putting the row together without the numbers. For me it takes the sense of accomplishment away – I just read letters and numbers and put them in order. There’s no fun in that for me, but I wanted to try it that way to get a sense of the brand. If it helps you and you learn to do jigsaws that way I’m all for it; assemble it whichever way makes you happy!

If you find a for dummies puzzle that you like, don’t be put off by the dummies part; the quality is very good – I say go for it. 🙂

Biking

On May 30, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Another one bites the dust. I was hoping that this puzzle was all there, because I knew my grandson would love it – he loves Mickey Mouse. Bummer!

This is one of the better Mega Puzzles we’ve found. The pieces were quite sturdy, the image is bright and colorful, and they fit together very well.

Oh well, he’s got plenty of other puzzles to work on, and there are still a bunch of them in my car to be delivered if I ever feel well enough to go visit. Unfortunately this was a no go, I don’t want to give him a puzzle with missing pieces. 😦

Slumber Party!

On May 29, 2017December 29, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

Why can’t grandpa get some rest? What in the world is going on while everyone else is asleep? You’ll be surprised when you puzzle the answer. 🙂

Another awesome Wasgij by Jumbo, with excellent artwork by Neil Easton. The box shows a crazy evening at home with everyone getting ready for bed, crying children, barking dog, etc. You must imagine what the scene looks like a couple of hours from then – what is going on and what has woken grandpa? I thought I had it figured out pretty quickly, but it turns out I was only half right. 😦 I usually get it early, but this one stumped me a little bit!

Jumbo quality is some of the best there is. It’s right up there with Ravensburger in my opinion; and in some areas I think Jumbo beats Ravensburger. They’re both at the top of my list, we’ll call it a tie.

This puzzle was quite fun, and I really enjoyed the assembly which is no surprise. Cartoon puzzle?- check, Jumbo quality? – check, Mystery picture? – check, Awesome puzzle play time? – double check!