Tag: 1000 pieces

Life’s A Beach In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

Life’s A Beach by Lars Stewart – Buffalo (Night & Day series) – 1000 pieces

This little beauty’s already been more difficult than I thought it might be, but I like that – it keeps me on my toes. When I chose this puzzle it was one of those days where you’re looking for something VERY specific, but you aren’t really sure what that is. Does that make sense to anyone other than myself? I knew I wanted something, but what that was wasn’t very defined in my brain, it was one of those “you know it when you see it” things. Luckily my eyes came to rest on this gorgeous image and here we are!

On the box it says © LARS, but those of us in the know can see just by the image that this is Lars Stewart, Aimee’s boo! (Do the kids even say boo anymore? Whatever. I’m old.) I checked MGL Art just to be sure, and this is most definitely one of his images. I adore the colors, and how everything seems to fit together so seamlessly, it’s just stunning.

The picture above is just one section at the bottom, a little more than halfway across; I’ve also got most of the moon and the mountain on the night side completed, along with the lighthouse and rainbow on the day side. There’s quite a bit of empty space still waiting to be filled up and for some reason the picture looked really odd to me with so much open area, so for right now all you get to see is just this little bit at the bottom.

I’m having a great time and very much enjoying the challenge. What are you puzzling today?

The Sunny City

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles5 Comments

The Sunny City by Felicia Chiao – Magic Puzzle Company – 1000 pieces

Oh man, I worked really hard on this puzzle and I’m so bummed I can’t show you all my work. *sigh* Oh well, that’s my policy when it comes to “mystery” puzzles, I never give away the ending and only show you a part of the puzzle that is shown on the box so there are NO SPOILERS here at My Jigsaw Journal.

I’ll never forget my first mystery puzzle, it was a Wasgij, and I was looking for an image of the box top to put on the What’s On My Board section of the blog, and the first image that popped up was a picture of the completed puzzle. I was so upset, I wanted to do the puzzle myself and figure it out and now I couldn’t un-see the solution! I will never do that to anyone so my policy is firm and I don’t do spoilers here. (I also never look for a mystery puzzle box image to put on the blog’s home page anymore!)

Magic Puzzle Company is a new to me brand, and I wanted to see what all the hype was about; the only way to do that is try it for myself. The pieces are a good thickness and there are an excellent variety of shapes that fit together well, if somewhat loosely; the fit seemed quite loose while assembling the border, but gets better the more you go along. The image reproduction is excellent with a matte finish and I enjoyed putting this one together more than I thought I would. Overall I would give it a good/very good rating.

If you haven’t heard of this brand, it’s called the Magic Puzzle Company because once you finish the puzzle there’s an extra packet to open, which helps you make your puzzle do a magic trick. It’s pretty cool, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

In the box you get the packet of pieces, the secret envelope, two posters (so you can have a friend join in the fun), a card with some info about the company and the puzzle itself and some easter eggs to look for in the completed image. The packet with pieces is closed with velcro so that none can escape, and the secret packet is closed with string ties; all meant to be reusable so you can send this puzzle on to others to enjoy once you’re done. In addition there is a sticker on the inside of the box top to record who completed the puzzle and the date – it’s meant to be passed on to others to share in the fun. I like that, and I have filled it out now that the puzzle is complete. 📝

There are a few whimsies in this puzzle, and for some reason I’m not sure of there is one very large piece. I have no explanation for it, just wanted to show you.

There are many things I want to say about this puzzle and the assembly – but I can’t without spoiling things. It’s frustrating. When I was working on the border I said to myself “I need to tell them …..” but then when I started writing up the post I realized I can’t tell you that, it might spoil things. Then something happened when I was working the inside of the image and the same thought came into my head, that I needed to remember to tell you that _______ happened – but I can’t!

Just ask Penny; I was texting her the day I finished it telling her how I was p*ssed that I put all that work into putting the puzzle together and I can’t show anyone or even say much about it. Luckily she says she doesn’t care for the artwork on their puzzles so she won’t be assembling any of them – so she got ALL the pictures that day, quite a few pictures showing everything – proof that I did all the work!😂

I really did enjoy this puzzle, even more than I thought I would. The artwork seemed as though it was all very much the same color palate and honestly I wasn’t sure how entertaining or difficult it would be to assemble, but it turned out to be great for puzzling and I had a very good time with it. Wish I could say more, I just refuse to spoil anything at all, so I can’t.

So what do you think? Are you up for a Magic Puzzle of your own? Abracadabra! 🧩

Spring Patchwork

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

Spring Patchwork by Bethan Janine – Elena Essex – 1000 pieces

This was another lend from Penny, and boy was she right about how much I would enjoy this one. I could not leave it alone. I kept going back to it over and over again and it was started and completed on the same day for this reason – it was too much fun!

My first Elena Essex puzzle – quality. It was good, excellent variety of shapes, beautiful reproduction with a matte finish, nice thick pieces that fit together well.

This was my favorite section to assemble, there’s something about the colors and the image itself. Most of the details are paler colors than I normally enjoy, but the dark background made this so entertaining for me. Gorgeous!

Most of this puzzle was super easy to sort, but this little section was the hardest to get all of the pieces for, I just kept missing ones I should have seen. And that little greenhouse was harder than it looks for me to assemble. Still this was a fun section to put together.

There’s something so beautiful about this simple little section. It was one of the last I assembled, but I enjoyed every piece. Absolutely gorgeous.

I enjoyed this puzzle very, very much – and like several others I’ve done lately I found myself wishing it had been a larger piece count because it was over much too soon. Each little section was it’s own little puzzle and they fit together beautifully into this gorgeous 1000 piece stunner. Of course I loved it. 💖

Dog Lovers In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Miscellaneous8 Comments

Dog Lovers by Anderson Design Group – MasterPieces – 1000 pieces

There hasn’t been too much work on this one, unfortunately. It’s been a rough week for me and I’m just hanging on and doing the best I can. Most of the week has been spent in bed, and yesterday wasn’t much different. I did make myself get in front of a puzzle though, because I knew I needed a puzzle to show you for today’s post. I’ll get my mojo back, I’m sure. I just need some rest.

This is post number 2000 here on My Jigsaw Journal. Can you believe it?!? Me neither! I should have gotten here a few years ago, but I’m known to take a break or two (sometimes for more than a year at a time). That’s alright, all good things happen in their own time, don’t they?

I wish I had something other than an in progress post for you today, but I don’t. There weren’t any plans to commemorate post 2000 and by the time I realized it there wasn’t time to plan much so I figured it would just be like any other day.

When you think about it though, the time it takes to write up that many blog posts – my goodness, I should be so proud of myself! (If you knew how many times I go back over them before posting to be sure there aren’t spelling or grammatical mistakes, you’d ask me if I was currently being medicated for my OCD *I’m not*)

Happy 2000th post to My Jigsaw Journal, and happy puzzling to us all! 🧩💚

The World of Charles Dickens

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

The World of Charles Dickens by Barry Falls – Laurence King – 1000 pieces

I had a great time with this puzzle, it was so much fun! Puzzles with a lot going on or a lot of buildings are not usually my thing, but this one was really entertaining. This is another puzzle from a swap with Penny; it’s so great that we don’t always have the same taste in puzzle images, because this way I get to do puzzles I wouldn’t normally go for and sometimes find out that even if the image isn’t something that connects with me that it can still be great fun to assemble.

This is only my third Laurence King puzzle, and the first one I’ve done that was manufactured in China. The previous ones I’ve done, Pop Art Puzzle and The World of Frankenstein were both manufactured in The Netherlands and were of excellent quality. A friend and fellow puzzle blogger from Europe told me about the bad quality of this brand’s puzzles that were made in China, so I’ve steered clear of those and only bought ones I could be certain where they were made. That being said, even though this was made in China it wasn’t too bad. We’ll start with the pros; the fit was exceptional (stay tuned for one of my famous puzzle standing up pictures), the finish was matte and had a wonderful hand feel, there were a good variety of piece shapes, and the image reproduction was excellent. On the negative side; this puzzle was secondhand from Penny, so with her disassembling it to put back in the box, the pieces showed that the chipboard used was far less superior – the tabs had already begun to fray and part of the image was delaminating. At the corners of many pieces the image was coming up and it made my usual post completion puzzle massage less satisfying as I didn’t want to cause any more damage by making the image come off even more.

Overall I’d say it was a good quality puzzle, but I much prefer the Netherlands made puzzles from this brand, they have the same quality as a Jumbo puzzle with an almost waxy feel to the finish and the much nicer chipboard. Just my opinion of course, please don’t come for me.

The image is so detailed with so many things to see, this is just one little section with many characters set in London. I’ll be honest and tell you that I have never read any of Dickens’ work, so I have no idea who these people are or anything about them. But you don’t need to know anything about the author (which I didn’t) to enjoy this puzzle, it’s just an entertaining image that makes for a fun assembly.

On the back of the very large (almost too big if you ask me) poster is this synopsis of Dickens’ life, with a legend of the characters and places represented in the artwork. It tells a little bit about each of his books, and shows you the people and places he wrote about. Very cool! I feel like I learned something after reading this, and that’s always a good thing in my book.

No one asked for it, but I did it anyway cause it makes me so very happy – puzzle standing up in the Stacey Stance picture!