Grandpa’s Cabin

On February 10, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles5 Comments

I’ve had this puzzle at my house for a few months, and just wasn’t in the right mood for it when mom first found it. I finally decided to dive in, and had a great time. The artwork by William S. Kreutz made for a challenging and beautiful puzzle and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. Love it when that happens!

MasterPieces random cut usually keeps things interesting, but this one was quite devious! Many times I was convinced a piece was missing, and it turned out to be 2 oddly shaped pieces in a configuration I hadn’t even considered. It certainly kept me on my toes right until the very end. This isn’t one of those puzzles where the nearer you get to the end, the faster the pieces fly into place; and I really enjoyed the challenge of it. Maybe our work on the Mystery Box Puzzle is giving me a greater appreciation for fun of conquering a complicated puzzle. 😎

I love the image, especially the characters. Grandma’s face is so sweet looking! Although if it were my family my daughter would be the one who went fishing and my sons would have stayed inside at the cabin to play video games or watch a movie. 😉

There’s something about this puzzle that makes me very happy, but I’m not sure how to articulate it. I had a wonderful time with the assembly, and just looking at the pictures brings a smile to my face.

Yesterday’s Awesome Find!

On February 9, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Thrift Store Puzzles10 Comments

Marketplace 1

Yesterday was another LONG trip to my pain management doctor over 4 hours from home; but I decided to try and make it a little less painful by finding myself some puzzles – and find some I did!

Marketplace 2.JPG

I got all 27 of these puzzles for $25 from a fantastic lady I found on Facebook Marketplace. (Thanks Jan! ❤) I don’t use Facebook, but my husband has an account that I use to look at puzzle pages, etc. One day when I was bored and looking around I found the marketplace and obviously searched for jigsaw puzzles for sale in my area. I didn’t see many bargains, or even puzzles that I wanted anywhere near my house, but I did find this lot almost 100 miles from home. It didn’t seem very cost effective to go that far for them, but luckily when I had to make another appointment with the doctor and knew I’d be within 10 miles or so of these puzzles I was VERY excited!

So here’s what I got:

Twelve 300 piece
Eight 500 piece
One 550 piece
Two 750 piece
Four 1000 piece

Great brands too! I’m so very happy with my purchase, even though 3 of the puzzles I’ve done before. No worries at all, even with those 3 taken out of the mix I only spent $1.04 per puzzle. 🙂 There’s another image that I have assembled before, but with a different piece count and by a different brand – so I’m definitely going to be doing that one again.

Finding these puzzles made a terrible day in the car and at the doctor’s office a whole lot less horrible – because I was so happy to find such great puzzles at such a great price!

These ought to keep me busy for a little while, right? ☺

Introducing Frenchy!

On February 3, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

A cute little kids puzzle, with the added fun of glitter! I love the Fancy Nancy images, they’re adorable, and remind me of myself. I’m all about being who you are, especially if you don’t fit in – who wants to be just like everyone else? Not me! 🙂

This is the fourth Briarpatch puzzle that I’ve assembled, and they’ve all had differing levels of quality; it makes me wonder why that is. This puzzle had thick enough pieces, but the chipboard used wasn’t very sturdy at all, and the way the pieces fit together was……odd. It wasn’t too tight, it wasn’t spongy, it simply felt very weird. I’m not sure I can properly explain it; you could plainly see that the piece was in the correct place, but it didn’t feel as though it was. Not a good fit, bent and flimsy pieces, and the puzzle didn’t lay flat.

Questionable quality aside though, Fancy Nancy is adorable!

As the Sun Sets

On January 30, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles9 Comments

The posse and I put this together at a family dinner while waiting for the food to be ready. It’s adorably cute, but wasn’t as fun to assemble as we’d hoped; though I’m not sure why that was. Sometimes the interesting, cute, or pretty image isn’t the most entertaining to actually put together. Or maybe we were all just hungry. 😉

Knightingale

On January 25, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles8 Comments

Knightingale was a fun image with beautiful colors and interesting artwork; unfortunately it also had poor quality too. There was a great deal of image lift which robbed me of the joy I get when running my hands over the completed puzzle – there were too many tabs sticking up and I didn’t want my puzzle massage to tear any of them off. Still it was a great find at the thrift store, I got several hours of enjoyable puzzle time for only 69 cents!

The artist may have been inspired by Picasso – or this scene is set somewhere near a leaking nuclear reactor. Fun characters with interesting colors, I’d love to find more puzzles with her artwork – it was even more fun to assemble than I’d hoped. 🙂