Irises

On May 9, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This is another very small piece puzzle that mom found somewhere. The image is only the top of Van Gogh’s Irises, but it was lovely and challenging and I had the best time putting it together!

The two puzzles we have from this series were truly the best quality smaller piece puzzles that I’ve worked with. The pieces are thick and fit together extremely well, there is no wondering if you have placed the piece correctly or not. The image reproduction is very good, but seems a bit darker than the original artwork (from my non-artist point of view anyway). If mom finds any Andrews + Blaine small piece puzzles at the thrift store we’re definitely getting them!

The whole puzzle fit on a cookie sheet, and I assembled the entire thing while in bed. I haven’t been able to sit at my puzzle table for well over a week now, so all the puzzles I’m doing have to fit on my white board or something smaller so that I can do them while lying down or propped up. There’s another advantage of the tiny puzzle! 😉

I was actually a little afraid of this puzzle for a while, the image is a bit difficult. I found it to be quite calming to assemble though; and even if I had to sit and stare at them for a bit, I could find and place the pieces correctly. In the end though, I’ve discovered that I’m much braver about difficult images if there aren’t many pieces. I don’t think I’ll ever attempt Starry Night in 1000 or even 500 pieces; but I didn’t have a problem putting it together as a 40 piece wooden puzzle. If it’s super challenging my courage is directly related to piece count. 300 pieces or less? Sure! More than that? Probably not. Maybe 500 tops – maybe.

I really enjoyed this puzzle much more than I anticipated, just as much as the first one I assembled – Fairgrounds. You can’t really tell how small they are until you see the tiny little box they come in. I took a great picture of the puzzle box next to my coffee cup in that post!

It doesn’t look like these small puzzles are being produced by A + B anymore, but if you happen across one in a thrift store, go for it! It’s a nice change from larger piece counts, and just may be more fun than you think. 👍

Mountain Grazing

On May 3, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Mom and I worked this puzzle together, though it isn’t the usual image we prefer; brighter colors and sharper lines are what we usually go for. But since I’ve mostly been doing smaller piece count puzzles lately we decided to give it a go. It was a lot of fun to assemble. ☺

Bits and Pieces puzzles aren’t our favorites, the pieces are usually good but I can’t say the same thing about the fit. I’ve had puzzles where in multiple spots you could just pull the pieces away, but I’ve also had nice fitting ones that I enjoyed assembling. It’s so much more about the fit and the image for me, but I know others have different preferences – we all know what works for us.

This puzzle was pretty darn good quality though, and although the artwork isn’t what we’d typically choose we enjoyed ourselves anyway. (That may have more to do with the quality of my puzzle posse than the puzzle company though. 👵)

Fly Away Home

On May 1, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

I love the bright colors in this puzzle, and the artwork is quite interesting. Mom and I assembled this together, and although the fit was terrible we had a good time with it. Everything doesn’t always have to be perfect, we can be entertained and appreciate the time spent together puzzling even if it’s quality was sub par.

MasterPieces puzzles have fluctuating quality at times, I’ve had excellent puzzles from them and also really bad ones. It seems as if different series are manufactured at different places, the quality is so varied. The pieces of this puzzle are grid cut and more elongated than most other MasterPieces puzzles I’ve assembled. The image reproduction is very good, as is the piece thickness and variety; but the fit was extremely loose and difficult to work with.

The image is perfect for puzzles and I found it very unique and fun – the colors and patterns made for just the right amount of challenging that day. The artist, Hayley Gillespie, has a delightful point of view and the artwork made the puzzle worth assembling even with the fit problems. I’d love to find more of her puzzles.

Mom is away this week and I won’t be visiting or puzzling with her on Friday. 😪 When real life gets in the way of my puzzle happiness it is such a bummer! Come home soon momma, I miss you already.

Frozen

On April 30, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This was the first Clementoni puzzle for children that I’ve assembled and I was pretty impressed with the quality – very nice!

The pieces were thick and fit together very well, and the image reproduction was absolutely beautiful. I love the companies that make excellent quality kids puzzles, and Clementoni is one of them. What a let down that a piece was missing and it can’t be passed along so that other kids could appreciate it.

I enjoy putting together kids puzzles. Although I am checking to be sure all the pieces are there before passing it on, I actually look forward to working with them too. It’s nice to start and finish a puzzle in one “sitting”, and the images are usually fun and brightly colored. A puzzle is a puzzle in my book, whether there are 24 or 24,000 pieces. I’m not too grown up to admit I have a good time assembling them and I don’t feel that working them is beneath me or too boring. I’m just a big kid anyway!

One of these days I’m going to have to see this movie; I must have done 5 or 6 Frozen puzzles in the last year and I’m wondering why it’s so popular. All my children are in their mid to late 20’s and I haven’t seen a kids movie in a while. Although I must admit that even though I enjoy kids puzzles I’m not that much of a movie buff and have to be in exactly the right mood to watch them. For now I’ll just stick with the puzzles. 😁

Private Library

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

I usually have relatively strong feelings either way about the puzzles I’ve assembled. It’s usually “loved it” or “where is the lighter fluid?”. For some reason this puzzle just makes me think “meh”; I’m even feeling blah about typing up this post. 😐

Springbok has some great puzzles, and although I’m not a fan of the super tight fit I’ve had a great time putting together many different Springbok images. There’s something about this one though, it just seems neither here nor there. It’s pretty, but wasn’t overly inspiring or entertaining to assemble. It could very well be that I was just in the wrong state of mind when putting it together; or it might be that this image just didn’t make for the kind of puzzle that I enjoy.

This puzzle is from the late 80’s, and the quality was good. The fit was extremely tight, but the pieces were very thick with an excellent variety of piece shapes. The image itself is quite dark, but the finished puzzle is actually very pretty.

You can’t fall in love with them all; if there aren’t any valleys you wouldn’t know how much you should appreciate the peaks, right?