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. 🙂

Cupcake Heaven

On January 16, 2019January 16, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

My first completed 1000 piece puzzle of the year. I chose it because it’s the kind of puzzle image that makes me happy – a collage with bright colors – and I wanted the first puzzle of the year to be awesome and entertaining.

Cupcake Heaven had 7 missing pieces and a devious random cut that had me using more brain power than I’d bargained for. If the puzzle was complete and the fit were less spongy it would definitely be one I’d assemble again. It wasn’t always easy to be sure the pieces were in the correct places because the fit was odd.

Even though it had missing pieces and a wonky fit I still enjoyed myself, which was the aim all along. Everything doesn’t always have to be perfect – life certainly never is! It’s what you do with what you’re given that counts in the end.

Cupcakes for everyone! 🙂

Mousing Around

On January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

My very last puzzle of 2018 was this Mickey Mouse puzzle that was great fun even though there were basically only 4 colors to work with. It’s such an interesting look for Mr. Mouse, and it made for excellent puzzling. 🙂

*I’m not feeling very chatty this morning, perhaps it’s my PADS diagnosis*

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