Witch Way to Halloween

On October 1, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

I did this puzzle in 2016, I put it on the 2016 Completed Puzzles January – March page but for some reason haven’t done a full post on it. While going back through the blog to prepare the first birthday post I came across this puzzle and realized with October only a few days away that it was the perfect time to post it. Witch Way to Halloween??

I love the artwork of this puzzle, the gravestones, the trick or treaters, the gorgeous colors of the leaves on the trees, the headless horseman, bats, etc. – it’s an excellent puzzle image. It also included several whimsies – a black cat, a witch in the shape of the puzzle itself, gravestones and others. The puzzle itself it gorgeous; the quality, unfortunately, not as beautiful. 😦

The pieces were a good enough thickness and the image reproduction was very nice. My problem was the cut/fit of the pieces. I know with a shaped puzzle and especially when there are whimsies that you can’t have every single piece connect, sometimes they just sit next to each other. But the fit of this puzzle took this to the extreme. Even when the entire puzzle was completed you could pull away whole sections because they didn’t connect anywhere. You can see in the picture that you can actually remove the witch’s hand – it just comes away. There was constant readjustment necessary, which is extremely annoying to me. And even where the pieces did connect the fit was very loose; any slight bump would upset many pieces.

This puzzle and the terrible cut/fit turned me off Bits and Pieces puzzles. I haven’t ordered from them since. I’ve done one or two of their puzzles we’ve found at thrift stores, but in general they’ve been on my naughty list. I may have just gotten a puzzle from the end of the run, you never know. Still, they’re not a manufacturer I go out of my way to find. They do have some gorgeous puzzles though – we’ve still got some on our to do list that we’ve picked up from the local thrift stores. Maybe the next one I do will be awesome!

Nevertheless, this puzzle is beautiful and a nice kick-off for the Halloween season. I love the fall! 🎃

Surprise Party for Pooh

On September 30, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Excellent quality kid’s puzzle by Mattel. It’s only a 24 piece puzzle and even though it literally took just a few minutes to assemble I still found it enjoyable. And who doesn’t love Winnie the Pooh?

This image has bright, fun colors and is appropriately easy enough for a 24 piece puzzle. The pieces are thick and sturdy and fit together amazingly well. Great quality!

These are the characters I remember from my childhood – they haven’t been “updated” thank goodness! I don’t care for the makeovers so many older Disney characters seem to be getting. In my opinion they should be left the way they were originally drawn. It makes me sad that the characters I remember so fondly from my childhood are different now or prettied up. Perhaps this is equivalent to “you kids turn that awful music down!” Some things seem better as they were in our memories.

Geez, I sound old! 😮

My Jigsaw Journal’s 1st Birthday!

On September 29, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling8 Comments

Check out my “birthday” present to myself!

Happy 1st Birthday to My Jigsaw Journal! 🎂 I can’t believe it’s been an entire year. And to celebrate you can see I’ve bought myself a present – a gorgeous wooden jigsaw puzzle from Artifact Puzzles, doesn’t it look like fun? I’m excited to get started assembling it, my very first wooden puzzle!

One year ago I had just received an enormous package from Germany containing the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle, and had decided to start a blog to document my progress assembling it. Wow. What a difference a year makes; here are the stats…..

398 posts (including this one)
252 puzzles assembled and 233 posted (this includes each of the 10 sections of Memorable Disney Moments, and 19 puzzles completed but not yet posted)
197,516 pieces assembled (Yes, I went back and added up the piece counts of every puzzle!)
21 puzzles and 4 games “officially” reviewed
8,092 views
1,360 visitors to the blog from over 52 countries

That’s craziness to me, I remember when I was so excited that 22 different people had looked at the blog! I started it just for friends and family to keep up with my progress on the 40,320 piece puzzle I had insanely decided to assemble. It wasn’t part of the plan to keep up with the blog once the puzzle was complete, but I found I enjoy talking about puzzles almost as much as I enjoy puzzles themselves!

This is just a tiny little blog in internet terms; I don’t have thousands of followers, but I do have fellow puzzle fans like myself who follow the blog to read and comment and I’m grateful for every one of them. Thanks so much my puzzle people! 😉

Special thanks to Puzzle Warehouse for giving me the opportunity to assemble and review puzzles for them, I’ve loved doing it. Most especially I have to thank my mom for being part of my Puzzle Posse, for being interested in and reading the blog every single day, and for helping to feed my puzzle addiction with her black belt thrift store skills. Love you!

Here’s to another year of happy puzzling! 😎

Alphabet

On September 28, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Time for another guest post. 🙂

*Black belt thrift store puzzle shopper here* (that’s my mom)

I find it nearly impossible to leave an unusual puzzle behind in the thrift store. Therefore, this puzzle came home with me, even though the package was in rough shape. This was from a company I had never done before, and for only 69 cents I more than got my money’s worth from it. A search for Hambly Studios, Inc. yielded a website for a maker of scrapbooking materials, rather than puzzles.

That said, I had a great time with the puzzle. It kept an old lady entertained and off the streets until well into the night. (Actually, till 1:00 AM, when I finally surrendered and went to bed.) Truth be told, I would have finished it if hubby had not come in and reminded me I had to get up early for church!

The fit was very loose, with just a slight jostle dislodging 4 or 5 pieces at a time. It was still a LOT OF FUN. Unfortunately it was missing 4 pieces. It would have been a keeper otherwise, in spite of the loose fit – I enjoyed it that much and would have done this puzzle again.

The packaging left a lot to be desired, as it was a clear plastic container; much like the throwaway packaging on a lot of items we buy these days. The advantage was that it was easy to see the quality of the pieces without having to open the container. Still, it was very flimsy and that may be how 4 pieces escaped.

All in all I enjoyed this puzzle very much, despite it’s quirks and missing pieces. It is still sitting on my board, as I can’t quite bring myself to throw it away just yet. Maybe tonight. When another puzzle calls my name and I need a place to work on it.

Doc McStuffins

On September 27, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This puzzle was lots of fun! Mom and I assembled it together and we both found it very interesting. There are 3 puzzles in one box, 3 different sizes of pieces; you can assemble them one at a time, or do them all and make a panoramic puzzle.

The piece counts are 24, 48, and 63 pieces. They were a good thickness, sturdy, and fit together nicely. It’s a shame there was a piece missing because this was a very nice puzzle; Cardinal does a good job with kid’s puzzles in my opinion.

I liked the irregular border on these puzzles and that the different piece sizes make it an excellent puzzle to work on with someone else. If you’ve got a child who likes Doc McStuffins, I would definitely recommend this puzzle. 🙂