Tag: 1000 pieces

Simple Pleasures

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Simple Pleasures by Steve Cameron – White Mountain – 1000 pieces

Happily, unlike the two previous White Mountain puzzles I’ve assembled, this one had very good quality and I enjoyed myself very much! I love the look of older advertising, or even images like this one where it’s in the style of old advertisements. Looks amazing and it made for great puzzling.

The fit on this puzzle was excellent, almost tight enough for me to stand the puzzle on end – which was a lovely change from the last two White Mountain puzzles whose fit was loose and floppy. Perhaps it’s where the puzzle was made, the type of chipboard, or even how sharp the dies that cut the pieces are. Whatever it was, this puzzle was very good in the fit department, which made me happy. The image reproduction was better as well, there were no blurry or fuzzy parts of the image. Overall I’d give this puzzle a very good rating, and I enjoyed myself from beginning to end!

This is one of life’s simple pleasures for me, a morning with peace and quiet and a perfect cup of coffee. Black, two sweeteners. Nothing fru-fru for me, coffee flavored coffee and that’s it. It’s a great way to start the day. Also, love the polka-dots in the background, it made these pieces easy to find.

Even if they’re store bought cookie dough, warm cookies from the oven are another of life’s simple pleasures that I relish. I was lucky enough to have a mom who made everything from scratch, and having warm cookies made with love and a tall glass of cold milk – makes me yearn for simpler times.

Of course I had to save the best part for last – completing a fun jigsaw puzzle in the middle of a jigsaw puzzle – truly a simple pleasure. All the pieces were pulled out on the initial sort, but they had to wait in their little container until everything else was finished.😉

This just speaks for itself, doesn’t it. If you know, you know. 🧩💖

Monsters

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Monsters – Re-marks – 1000 pieces

This was a wonderfully entertaining puzzle that was even better than I’d hoped. I enjoyed every part of this puzzle – even the sorting if you can believe it. 😮 I’m letting my weird brain take over while I’m puzzling these days, and whatever way it decides it wants to assemble is what I do.

Don’t want to sort? Don’t! Want to puzzle without using an image to assist? Go for it! Want to let your OCD out to play and revel in lining up pieces on the trays and keeping everything neat and tidy? Of course you should! (See, I told you my brain was weird)

Re-marks has such a wonderful catalog of collage images; book covers, travel posters, movies, decades, themes like this one, etc. Almost every one of them looks good to me. The quality is good/very good, and this puzzle especially had an excellent fit which made me quite happy. The image reproduction was crisp and clean, and the random cut made for piece shapes that were varied and interesting. This was one of the best quality Re-marks puzzle I’ve assembled in a while.

There were so many sections that brought back memories that it was difficult to decide which ones should get a closeup. This collage isn’t just movie monsters, it has novels, comic books, tv shows, cereal, songs, albums, and even candy! If I let myself go on and on about all the panels that I wanted to talk about this would be an unbelievably long post and you would most likely get quite bored before the end. In the end I narrowed it down to only three, but trust me I could talk about MANY more than ones shown below.

As a dyed-in-the-wool comedy nerd, of course Young Frankenstein (pronounced Fronkensteen) was going to be one of my choices. It’s an excellent movie, and besides being extremely funny it also makes me think of my boys – they both love this movie and they also love to quote from it, sometimes ad nauseam. Additionally, seeing the movie poster has me feeling my age a bit today, as every one of the talented actors shown here are now gone and it’s a bit sad.

Still, the movie makes me happy and I can’t hear “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and not think of Peter Boyle and Gene Wilder singing and dancing and in general being ridiculous. It makes me laugh out loud every single time I see it. 😂

My youngest son picked out this puzzle for me to assemble, and after I said I would do it he went to his room and brought me back a copy of Frankenstein with this exact cover that he had just gotten out of the library that day. He then proceeded to tell me ALL about the book, Mary Shelley, and the many Frankenstein movies that have been made. I got a 15 minute Frankenstein lecture! None of this was new to me, when I assembled The World of Frankenstein almost three years ago I got almost the same lecture about the book, it’s origins, the author, etc. But any time my baby boy wants to engage with me is good and I’d happily sit through the lecture again to spend time with him talking TO me instead of AT me.

When I saw this section of the puzzle it made me so happy! I can’t even begin to count the number of times I read this book to my kids – complete with voices and over-the-top acting on my part – they loved it, and so did I. We didn’t read it much at bedtime though; they got more excited the closer we got to the end of the book, I got louder too, and it wasn’t really conducive to winding down and going to sleep. This puzzle brought back such a good memory of sharing this book with my babies. 💕

I had the best time with this puzzle, the whole process made me happy. I don’t really want to take it apart yet, it was too much fun!

Carnival Costumes In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

Carnival Costumes by Aimee Stewart – Buffalo – 1000 pieces

This beauty has been slow going, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the puzzle, and everything to do with me. I’m not able to sit for long, and this has been going together one little costume, or partial costume, at a time. Still, the colors are amazing and I’m enjoying myself even if I’m not in front of the board for any extended periods of time.

The poster that came with this puzzle seems overly large, and in order to hold it and look at certain areas I either need both hands or it has to be folded up a bit. I find this less than easy to work with. Some puzzles (for me) require use of the box image or poster, and this is one of them – but this big poster isn’t the most user friendly, in my most humble Puzzle Goddess opinion.

I may not be able to finish this one today, but at the very least I’m shooting for getting it done by tomorrow. Can’t wait to see it completed, it’s gonna be gorgeous!

I Love America

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

I Love America by Charlie Girard – White Mountain – 1000 pieces

This was an “okay” assembly for me, for some reason I wasn’t as entertained as one would hope. I chose this puzzle only because I was looking for a patriotic puzzle for July 4th, not because I was really wanting to put this one together. Mood definitely affects how much I enjoy a puzzle, and I was definitely in the wrong mood for this one.

The quality of this puzzle left a bit to be desired, which is a bit of a bummer because I just took advantage of a sale on their website and ordered a few puzzles. Here’s hoping they’re much better quality than this one. The fit was a little floppy and care had to be taken when moving pieces around, in addition the image reproduction seemed fuzzy in many parts and it was very difficult to distinguish between the darker pieces. A horse, a chocolate chip cookie, a group of beer bottles, and the rocks near a lighthouse – they all seemed to be the same blotchy colors and it was hard to know what went where. It wasn’t terrible quality, but it wasn’t great either. It was passable.

Love the look of a lighthouse, but I’m wondering, why is this “American”? Aren’t lighthouses used around the world? Or is it just this specific lighthouse? Can anyone tell me where this is?

NASA, muscle cars, Betty Boop, Moon Pies, Disney World and what we call football – now there’s no question that these things are American. I enjoyed the license plates spelling out American muscle cars, it was a fun section to assemble, along with the buffalo nickel.

The flag in the shape of the country was easy enough to sort and lots of fun to put together. I wish there were more things to say about this one, but my little old lady brain is failing me at the moment – I’ve got nuthin’.

Happy Fourth of July to those who celebrate, Happy 250th Birthday America, and to everyone else, Happy Saturday!

Nevertheless, She Persisted

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles10 Comments

Nevertheless, She Persisted by Feitzky LLC – Cobble Hill – 1000 pieces

This thrift store find is a puzzle I’ve been wanting to do for a while and I finally found it. I wish I had better things to say about it, but my copy had either been VERY pre-loved and assembled many times or it was an extremely loose fit to begin with. Love the image – love it – but the fit left a bit to be desired.

Cobble Hill is a brand I consider to be towards the higher end of the quality scale: their linen paper makes for an excellent hand feel, their random cut makes for an entertaining assembly, the image reproduction has always been stellar, and the fit is usually good/very good. This puzzle may have been cut at the end of a run when the die is becoming duller making for a looser fit, I can’t be sure as this is a thrift store purchase. I still consider Cobble Hill puzzles to be very nice quality and I never hesitate to buy one if the image speaks to me.

To say I’m shocked that the puzzle is complete would be an understatement. The pieces were loose in the box, which was not taped up well at all. When I got to the checkout at the store and starting putting my puzzles on the counter I reached for the box under this one to find two puzzle pieces sitting there, they had come out of the box when I put it in my cart! The look and feel of the pieces told me they were Cobble Hill, so back into the box they went; but I was thinking about it all the way home and had convinced myself that there were going to be missing pieces in this one. When it came to putting in the last few pieces, I saw that their were four left – and four spaces – and I said, out loud, to no one, “I can’t believe it!”.

The piece shape is very prominent in this puzzle, which doesn’t at all detract from the enjoyment of the assembly for me, but does make getting a good picture difficult. I took several close up pictures of the puzzle but even close up it’s challenging to see the image behind all the lines. I wasn’t happy with any of them, even after messing with them in editing, so I’ve just taken a picture of the poster that came with the puzzle.

As a woman who supports women I love the thought behind this image. Without getting too political however, I question the inclusion of one of these women (who did NOT support females), and also the exclusion of the woman whose persistence in the face of bullies and having things “mansplained” to her before being silenced is the reason that Nevertheless, she persisted became a rallying cry for feminists. Just my own personal opinion of course – we ladies are still allowed to have our own opinions about things.

The loose fit was quite a bother to work with, but I still found myself lost in the assembly at times, completely focused on the pieces and where they went. I’m glad I finally got to assemble this puzzle and I did enjoy it, just not as much as I’d hoped. Still, Cobble Hill puzzles are good quality and I never hesitate to recommend them.