The Adventures of Robin Hood (Buried Blueprints)

On November 15, 2016May 27, 2023 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Buried Blueprints Adventures of Robin Hood by Al Lorenz – Masterpieces – 1000 pieces

I did NOT enjoy this puzzle at all. If it weren’t for my husband working it with me and making me keep going I would have stopped halfway through. He seemed to enjoy it more than I did, and being the wonderful wife that I am I humored him and kept working on it even though it was frustrating me. 😉

The quality was good enough, but the artwork was fuzzy and indistinct which made it quite difficult to find pieces you’re looking for. I believe it was the nature of the artwork and not the image reproduction. The pieces were random cut which was a nice change from the grid cut puzzles I normally do, and I did enjoy the informational blurbs placed throughout the puzzle.

Not a very fun one in my opinion but it was a 99 cent thrift store purchase, and it occupied me for a while.

Civil War Generals

On November 6, 2016May 24, 2023 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

What a fun puzzle! It was refreshing after working the large Cinderella section to have a puzzle where I barely had to look at the box and could put together large sections of it. I’m not sure I would call it a collage, but it felt that way to me. Really relaxing and entertaining, along with educational.

The Eurographics brand is quite good – random cut, good thickness, and the image was crisp. Really fun to assemble; it was easy to pull out all the words and put those together, then the flags, etc. The frames for the Union and Confederate generals were different as well, so that made the portraits easy to pull out and assemble too.

Under each general’s name was a short bio including dates of birth and death, major battles and campaigns participated in, and place of burial. I had never heard of many of these men and I learned a lot.

And oh my the facial hair – mutton chops for days, impressive beards and fantabulous mustaches!

Candied Apples and Candy Corn

On November 1, 2016May 24, 2023 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This is not your normal Ceaco puzzle, the pieces were backed with thick cork board and there were a lot of whimsies – there were balloons, a dog, a train, birds, even a clown! SO MUCH FUN! As an added bonus there are 42 pieces of the puzzle that you can assemble separately to make a juggling clown. I didn’t do that part, but what a cool idea!

The puzzle was only 584 pieces, but they were quite large – almost too big for my whiteboard which I used at the time for regular 1000 piece puzzles (20″ x 27″). It wasn’t an easy puzzle by any means, the two trees at the top took me an hour 😮 It’s more challenging with the random cut of the pieces and whimsies, but I enjoyed every moment and love, love, LOVE THIS PUZZLE!

I used to tell my mom to stop buying puzzles at thrift stores because we have so many, and she’s always buying more. Not anymore. If it makes her happy she should go for it, I should keep my mouth shut – not to mention she sometimes finds amazing puzzles like this one. Best thrift store find of the year! (I checked online to find a price, and found one new for sale at a retail store for $124.00!)

The Talking Jigsaw Puzzle

On October 13, 2016June 16, 2026 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles14 Comments

I’ve finally completed The Office Building! I’ve been ignoring it since my progress on the big kahuna was going so well, but I finally put this one to bed! They’re really quite fun, it’s too bad they’ve been out of print for so long. We were very lucky to find both this one and The Fitness Center at thrift stores. I’ve purposely taken a not so great picture so that if someone does have this puzzle I’m not giving away the solution.

Each window or section is four pieces, you assemble each section and once they are all assembled you have to figure out where they belong in the puzzle by clues – what the people are saying, room numbers in the background, where each person is looking or pointing, etc. Here’s a close up of a few sections to show how the clues help you with positioning.

Be careful, each window actually fits next to every other window!

You can check to be sure you’re placing each window in the correct place by checking the back of the pieces. On the back of the puzzle is the word “congratulations” in many different fonts, you can see immediately if you’ve placed a section in the right place. I enjoyed this puzzle very much, the extra challenge of having no picture to use as a guide and putting together each little section. I hope we are able to eventually find some more of the talking jigsaws at thrift stores, it’s a enjoyable challenge!