The Valuation Day (What If? #14)

On May 12, 2020May 12, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles10 Comments

Such a fun puzzle! As per my usual rules I do not show the picture of the entire finished puzzle, to do so would be a spoiler and I’m not about spoiling anything. When I started my first What If? puzzle, I searched for a picture of the box to put on my “What’s on my board” section of the homepage and of course the first image that popped up was of the finished puzzle – what a disappointment for me! I couldn’t un-see it, I knew what happened in the image and I was upset. I will never do that to my readers, so all you get to see is the character shown on the box, heavily cropped.

You have to use more brain cells than normal because you don’t have the finished picture; but luckily with this series there are plenty of hints on the box image. You can see what everyone is wearing, what the background looks like, and you know what the premise is. This puzzle in particular was a little easier because you can tell as soon as you start turning over pieces and sorting what is going to happen. I can’t tell you what, but the “problem” is evident all over the pieces.

According to what we’re told, “The picture on the box shows the crowd’s excitement and anticipation….the puzzle inside this box depicts the shattering outcome! Doris Bootsayle loves rooting around jumble sales, charity shops and the like. She cannot wait to get TV auction expert Tom Wannapott to value her latest find. Will Tom make her dreams come true, or is there a sting in this tantalizing tale?”

So what happens? Of course I can’t tell you! That would ruin the fun out of figuring it out yourself. I love these puzzles where you don’t have an image and you have to figure out where everyone ends up and what happened. The artwork is fantastic, the puzzle quality is excellent, and the fun is built right in.

I’ve never shown this before, but one of the fun things about these puzzles is that they’re all drawn by the same artist, Geoff Tristam (one of my favorites 💖), and he does something fun on the back of the box. There’s a picture of him next to his bio, and in every picture he’s dressed up in the theme of the image. In this puzzle, which is a tv show much like Antiques Road Show, he’s dressed up as the expert…

Geoff Tristam

The Expert

I’ll try to remember to show his picture on the box with the remaining What If? puzzles I have left to do. They make me smile, and a smile can be such a help when you’re having a bad day, or just help to brighten a good day even more.

Have you done a Ravensburger What If? Puzzle? If not, I highly recommend giving one a try. I love them! 💟

Mill Cottage

On May 7, 2020May 7, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Such a pretty picture – and it was pretty difficult too! I knew it would be going in of course, I just didn’t know how much. The brush strokes made it quite a challenge; but being the puzzle goddess that I am, I finally triumphed! I’m pretty proud of myself for finishing the pretty picture. 😁

The quality of this Milton Bradley puzzle was good/fair. The pieces were on the thinner side, and some were easily or already bent when I opened the box. The fit was good, if somewhat loose, and the image reproduction was good. Overall I found it a bit disappointing, but of course that is just one person’s opinion; you may find that the quality is perfectly acceptable for you, and in the end that is what matters most. For myself though, I don’t think another new purchase of a 1000 piece Milton Bradley puzzle is in the cards for me unless the image was fabulous and I just couldn’t live without it.

Mill Cottage 1

All the pretty flowers that look so beautiful in front of Mill Cottage were just blobs of paint. I suppose, when you think about it, basically all paintings are just blobs of color the closer you get to them; but these little blobs of color were very difficult to assemble. I should know better than to buy puzzles like this, brush strokes and blobs are no fun for me!

Mill Cottage 2

I loved this little guy, he was one of the first things I assembled. It looks like he’s trying to get the attention of the girl on the shore, and maybe he’s trying to impress her. How sweet. Lovesick little boys are pretty cute, good thing we little girls know how to handle them. 👧

Banana Split In Progress

On April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling2 Comments

Banana Split IP — Banana Split by Aimee Stewart – Buffalo – 1000 pieces

Unfortunately yesterday didn’t see much puzzling, but I’m hopeful that today will be better. With an Aimee Stewart image on my board, all I really want to do is get back there and start placing pieces. 😍

It just reminds me how much I enjoy working a puzzle with her artwork; the colors are beautiful, they’re fun to put together, not so easy as to make it boring, and it’s lovely to watch the image come together. I’d tell you more about it, but my fingers are itching to be placing pieces rather than typing!

Are you working on something fun this week?

What’s the Temperature?

On April 25, 2020April 25, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

It will be no surprise to anyone that I had a fantastic time with this puzzle. I love collages, but the downside of them is that they are over too quickly because I can’t seem to walk away. Even if I sit in the chair at my puzzle table until the pain makes me stop, I end up resting for only a little while because I just have to get back to it!

This thrift store puzzle was complete, which isn’t something I can say about every puzzle bought second-hand. It was well loved, and it looks as though it’s been assembled several times; many of the tabs had the image lifting off from repeated assembly and disassembly. Otherwise, it was still in relatively good condition.

What's the Temperature 1

This made me smile, you almost need a magnifying glass to read it, but between the degrees of temperature it tells you why you should go fishing. At the colder end it says “Oh yay! Pre-frozen fish”, “Frozen worms aren’t slimy”, and “Wouldn’t sweat if we fished today”. At the warmer end it says “We fish, we get a tan, what d’ya say?”, “Too hot for anything but fishing”, and something like “Get the fish pre-baked today”. I’m not one for fishing, but I think this may be the cutest thermometer I’ve ever seen.

What's the Temperature 2

Looks to me like this is some sort of “snake oil” medication, but it makes for a cool looking thermometer. My son says “Dr.” Ramon looks like the Monopoly Man. 😄

What's the Temperature 3

You can see above many of the tabs with the image sticking up. It’s a thrift store puzzle that has been assembled before – you can’t say how many times – and there’s quite a bit of image lift on this puzzle. It makes the end of puzzle “massage” a little less satisfying; you can feel them sticking up and you have to try not to rip any of the image off while it’s getting it’s rubdown.

And when’s the last time anyone heard of Ken-L Ration dog food? Looooong time!

I started this one in the morning and finished before bedtime. Perhaps I need to see if I can find some 2000 piece collages – are there any of those out there? I’m sure there aren’t right now, but once we’re able to find puzzles again I’d love to get my hands on two or three — or twenty-seven of them. 😇

Mill Cottage In Progress

On April 18, 2020April 18, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling2 Comments

Mill Cottage IP — Mill Cottage by Debbie Cook – Milton Bradley – 1000 pieces

I was up most of the night, so this puzzle finally got sorted and started. Yay insomnia? Yeah, I don’t think so. 🥱

On the plus side I’m finally working a puzzle again after a couple of days of almost no puzzling at all; on the minus side I’m exhausted and loopy and not all here mentally. Although one could argue that I am never “all there”. Whatever. I’m lots of fun!

When I was near the end of the sorting I found a couple of edge pieces that had become completely delaminated (the image was separated from the chipboard), but luckily both parts of the pieces were there so I could fix them before I started assembling. It was odd that it was only two pieces and that they were next to each other along the edge.

Mill Cottage pieces

The paper used for the image was quite sturdy, in fact when I was sorting I didn’t notice that these two pieces were much thinner than the rest. But I recognized immediately that the two pieces of chipboard had no image on one side. It was easily remedied with a little bit of super glue, not much of a problem at all really. Onward!

It looks as though it’s going to be a difficult assembly – there’s a LOT of green. But perhaps I’m wrong and it’ll be much easier than I thought. Here’s hoping.

I hope all you members of the PADS Posse have a great day, with plenty of time for our favorite hobby/obsession. Happy puzzling! 🧩