Ocean Life

On December 27, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This was one of those thrift store puzzles that almost breaks my heart. We love finding fantastic quality kids puzzles, assembling them, and then donating them. When we find one of such excellent quality that’s missing a piece it’s so much more of a disappointment than regular missing pieces to me.

This Mudpuppy puzzle was one of the best quality kids puzzles I’ve seen in quite some time. Extremely thick pieces, beautiful colors, excellent fit – and it even had a little extra something – a search and find aspect. All the pictures around the edges are also shown in the main image and they’re not all easy to find.

What a bummer that it’s missing a piece! It makes me sad, as a lover of puzzles, that they aren’t taken care of. (But I do remember childhood too, vaguely, so I also understand.) But for some strange reason these missing pieces makes me wish that I could go back to my childhood and take MUCH better care of all of my toys and things. If I had, not only would they be worth some big time cash right now, I’d still have some of the things I loved to play with as a child. How awfully sweet and uncharacteristically sentimental of me, right? I know!

Innocent Light

On December 15, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles3 Comments

Mom had a successful thrift store trip this week and brought me this Christmas puzzle that was only 100 pieces. It’s such a pretty image! There’s a lot of glitter, but I wasn’t able to get a good picture of it.

Unfortunately this is an E&L puzzle, and the quality was dismal. The pieces are thin and fit together very poorly. You can see by the picture above that the finished puzzle doesn’t lie flat, but being a used puzzle it might be from our fantastic Florida humidity rather than poor quality. Although at 35 cents, it was still money well spent; even with less than perfect quality I can still enjoy the puzzle.

On the positive side, this is a “Sparkles in Light” holiday series glitter puzzle, and the glitter is adhered extremely well. There wasn’t one speck of it anywhere on the bottom of the box – and that’s a rarity with glitter puzzles that I’ve worked. No festive puzzle dust at all! LOL

Over the River

On December 11, 2018December 11, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles11 Comments

Over the River is the companion puzzle to one I assembled in February of this year. They come in a book box with two compartments – each holds a puzzle with cork backing, both by the same artist. Like many of the “different” Ceaco puzzles it was very good quality.

🎶Over the River and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go!🎶

The first one I put together from this box was Simple Pleasures, and it seemed much easier to assemble than this puzzle (although my memory isn’t as reliable as it used to be 👵). There were so many places around the whimsies that didn’t connect at all, and it was a bit frustrating to constantly have to fix pieces that had moved. It can get quite tedious – but sometimes that’s how whimsies go.

With these puzzles it’s sometimes hard to find all the whimsy pieces before you begin; so these are some, but definitely not all of them…

Over the River whimsies

The scalloped edges aren’t as easy to assemble as you’d think, so I began with the words. It took way more brain power than I’d assumed!

Over the River 1

The inset scenes were lovely!

Even though it gave my gray cells a little bit of a workout, it was great fun. And you definitely can’t beat the price – 99 cents for two 500 piece puzzles with cork backing! I absolutely got more than a dollar’s worth of entertainment. ☺

Coastal Cove

On December 7, 2018December 8, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles8 Comments

This was a thrift store find that mom purchased mainly because it was only 69 cents. Normally she wouldn’t get a image like this – it’s not our usual “pile of pieces” (cup of tea). But it was a small piece count, we always love to try out new brands, and you absolutely can’t beat that price!

Shutterfly will make just about any custom gift with your photos – cards, mousepads, mugs, puzzles, etc. To be honest, in my head I was thinking that the quality couldn’t possibly be very good. I’m happy to report that based on this puzzle I was quite wrong. 🙂

The pieces were pleasantly thick and felt good in your hand, they had the almost waxy feel of a Gibsons or Jumbo puzzle; there were a variety of piece shapes, but the majority were ballerinas (2 prong/2 hole). The image reproduction is hard to gauge, since the image shown is quite bland color-wise, but there didn’t seem to be any blurry or fuzzy sections. My only issue was the slightly loose fit, though it wasn’t too bad.

I normally don’t comment on puzzle boxes unless they’re unusual or very good quality – I was very impressed with the quality of the box! It was extremely sturdy and felt even nicer than the boxes of some “premium” puzzle brands. Overall I was impressed by the quality of both the box and the puzzle inside.

The picture was quite boring (just my opinion), though perhaps the place held a special significance to whomever the puzzle was made for; it’s just not my idea of an interesting puzzle image. But to each their own, right?

*update*

One of my readers requested a picture of the box. I really couldn’t figure out a way to show why I was impressed with it’s quality other than to show the texture of it in the view of the side. My assumption was that box quality wouldn’t be high on their list, but I was pleasantly surprised!

Coastal Cove box 2

Coastal Cove box

Best of British

On November 21, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This was a fantastic thrift store find, with bright colors and fun subject matter. Even better – mom came over to help finish it, and all the pieces were present and accounted for!

I put this puzzle away for quite a while, I was a bit hesitant to get going on the assembly. It was all that red! I love a collage, but all that red everywhere had me thinking it was going to be difficult to assemble. It wasn’t though, I enjoyed it very much. 🙂

The quality was excellent! The pieces had a different finish on them than the previous Falcon puzzles I’ve assembled. The finish was clean feeling and smooth; the previous ones I’d worked had an almost waxy feel to them. Interesting. Differences in finish aside, they were thick pieces with a good fit, fair variety in piece shapes, and excellent image reproduction. I enjoyed working with these pieces, and they made a beautiful puzzle.

I’m sure you remember this guy from yesterday’s post. I love his face! Every time I look at this puzzle I’m drawn to this adorable dog. I don’t know why I think of it as a male though, other than the face seems masculine to me; which means it’s probably a she. LOL

This is basically what many people think of when they think about Britain – double-decker buses, the queen’s guards, and fish & chips. I was intrigued about why there were daffodils though, because the national flower of Britain is the rose. A little research tells me that they’re associated with Lent because they bloom in the early spring and the blooms usually drop before Easter – which is why in Britain they’re known as the Lent Lily. I love it when I learn something from a puzzle!

I had a great time putting this puzzle together, it is a lovely, interesting collage that had wonderful quality. I’m looking forward to finding more fantastic puzzles in the thrift stores this holiday season!