Dogs

Dogs – Cavallini & Co. – 1000 pieces

Isn’t this a great image for a dog and puzzle lover like myself? I absolutely adored it and had a great time putting it together. My apologies for the glare on the picture, the shiny/slick backing made it so that I couldn’t stand my board up for a good pic of the completed puzzle – it kept trying to slide off!

This was a new company for me. All of their puzzles that I’ve seen are in tubular containers and a little more on the pricey side. The quality is good/very good; good thickness, excellent fit, good reproduction and variety of shapes. They have a nice hand feel on the front of the puzzle, but use that slick/sharp coating on the back – I am not a fan of this type of backing.

Again, my apologies for the pictures. They’re at an angle so you could see the image without glare, it isn’t optimal but it was the best I could do.

Of course if there’s a Boston Terrier I’m gonna take a close up. Actually there are two sections with Bostons in this image, this was my favorite of the two.

I mean, how cute is this? A choir of adorable dogs giving a performance – love it. 💚

Cavallini & Co. – from what I’ve seen – make good quality puzzles. I’ve only done this one so I can only speak for this puzzle specifically until I’ve done at least one more. They’re a bit on the pricey side from what I’ve seen, so unless one of their images grabs me and I HAVE to get it, I’m not sure I’ll be getting another one any time soon. Not because there’s anything wrong with them, I’m just watching my puzzle spending at the moment.

Wild Animals In Progress

You Wild Animal! by Mario Zucca – Ravensburger – 1000 pieces

I just started this yesterday, and it’s as much fun as I thought it would be – extremely enjoyable! It isn’t always as easy to pick out the pieces for each animal as you might think, but if it were too easy it wouldn’t be as much fun.

It’s a great quality Ravensburger puzzle, and I’m glad I grabbed it when I was puzzle shopping last year. This is a new artist for me, and the artwork is fantastic. It might not get finished today, but that’s ok; I’m still enjoying every piece. 🧡

Blacklight Bowling

Blacklight Bowling by Aimee Stewart – Buffalo – 1000 pieces

This beauty was either a Christmas or birthday present from my fellow P.A.D.S. sufferer and Aimee Stewart fan, Penny; I absolutely adored it, and am so thankful to have people in my life who help me feed the beast that is my puzzle addiction. 👹🧩👹

It was outstanding quality all around – Buffalo puzzles have almost never let me down. The fit, chipboard, piece shape, and reproduction are excellent and make for truly fun puzzles. I’m so thankful that my favorite artist licenses her work to a company that cares about it’s product; if I could only get Aimee Stewart images from Ceaco or Galison I think my poor heart would break!

Aimee and her husband Lars seem to have gone bowling with their fur baby (a Shiba Inu named Miso) – how in the world did Miso get a better score? And who programmed the computer to keep score? There is obviously a glitch somewhere; those are clearly not calculated properly.

And yes, I’m a nerd who checked to see if they were tallied correctly. 🤓

Love the snack bar, it’s so colorful with all of that neon – I would love to go cosmic bowling there! 🎳

China Cupboard

China Cupboard by Ciro Marchetti – Ravensburger – 1000 pieces

It was completely by accident that I chose this puzzle to assemble while holding the giveaway for a Wentworth puzzle with an image by Ciro Marchetti. I didn’t even realize it was his work until I was checking the box for the name of the artwork. What a fun coincidence!

Normally I associate Ciro Marchetti with fantasy images, but I have done one or two puzzles with his artwork that aren’t in that genre. Now we can add this beauty, it’s a great image for puzzling and I loved every piece. It’s a little dark at the bottom and up the sides, but not too much so and it wasn’t overly difficult.

Great Ravensburger quality, there was quite a bit of puzzle dust to deal with – but otherwise it was excellent. The fit was lovely as was the reproduction and as always there are a good variety of shapes so as not to make for a boring assembly. I knew I would enjoy this puzzle, and fortunately I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would!

The images on these china plates was as crisp and clear as if they were their own puzzle. Absolutely beautiful.

We all know I’m not a cat person, but this little one was very cute. You can tell by this cat, or at least I can, that this is digital artwork. I’m not knocking it at all, many of my favorite puzzles are those by digital artists who use their computers and creativity to produce compelling and beautiful images that make for most excellent puzzles.

This puzzle was so much fun, and with the wonderful quality made for a fantastic puzzling experience. I absolutely loved it!

Classic Movies

Classic Movies – Re-marks – 1000 pieces

My oldest son and I put this one together in about two and a half hours, and we had a great time with it! I love a collage puzzle, and he LOVES old movies – the perfect combination.

This was the only puzzle I received this year for Christmas; he bought it for me but it’s being glued for him to put up on the wall in his room. He’s good about getting puzzles for me that he’d like to keep – but he also wants to assemble them with me – that’s the real gift. 💝

The fit on this Re-marks puzzle was extremely loose, it made it a bit difficult at times. I’m not thrilled with the recent update they’ve done with their chipboard; it’s very slick feeling on the back and if I’m not careful it slides right off the board when I’m trying to get pictures. Frustrating!

Dracula is my son’s favorite movie out of the 39 in this image, and mine is Rear Window. To be honest there are only eight movies that I’ve seen – what an uncultured swine I am! My son has seen fifteen of them, almost twice as many as I have. But to be fair he’s been a movie buff since he was very young – and he loves the classics; the movies he hasn’t seen he still has a wealth of facts stored in his brain about each one. He can tell you so much information about movies it would make your head spin!

Anatomy of a Murder (middle image) is a movie that makes me think of mom; I remember her telling me how scandalous it was when it came out. It’s a courtroom drama dealing with a rape and there were words used that had previously never been spoken in American films such as “contraceptive”, “climax”, and “spermatogenesis”. And apparently the talk of a woman’s underwear being torn off was quite racy in 1959. Oh my. If only those pearl clutchers could see the movies we have today. Yikes. Double yikes!

I loved puzzling with someone side by side again, that hasn’t happened much since mom died – I miss it. And I’m thankful my baby boy decided to come out of his room for a couple of hours and spend some time with his old mom. It made my day. 💖