The Color of Love

On January 19, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

For some stupid reason I thought this one was going to be as easy and as fun as Pencil Pushers. I am such an idiot; this was not nearly as fun. I even toyed with giving up on it once or twice. It was much more difficult, and I knew early on there were missing pieces, which always bums me out a little bit. It’s a cool picture, I just went into it with an unrealistic expectation of how it easy and fun it would be.

The quality was MasterPiece’s usual. Good thickness, interesting shapes, good fit. I started with the scribbled heart in the middle, and knew pretty quickly that there were at least 2 missing pieces – little did I know it would turn in to 11 missing pieces! Why on earth would someone donate a puzzle with this many pieces missing? It makes no sense to me. It’s a chance we take when we buy used from the thrift stores, but it’s still a let down when there are this many pieces missing.

There were colors in multiple places, so it wasn’t as easy as Pencil Pushers with just one pencil of each color. It was easy enough to separate out the different colors, but not as easy to assemble them all in their respective places. It took more time than I planned on, but it was still a fun assembly.

Luckily as I was nearing the end my daughter came over for a visit, she helped me finish it, which made it more enjoyable for me. I enjoy my “alone” puzzle time to decompress and relax, but it’s fun to share a puzzle and time spent together too. ❤

Movie Reel

On January 17, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

My youngest son gave me this puzzle for Christmas, so bright and fun and full of color! My daughter and I started it’s assembly on Christmas Day after we finished Retro Dogs, and I finished it a day or so later. I love the image, and it was mostly great Ravensburger quality but I was slightly disappointed in the image reproduction. Some of the smaller images were more fuzzy and indistinct than others; that’s not something I usually find with a Ravensburger.

The quality of the pieces themselves was excellent, as usual. The image reproduction, though, left a bit to be desired. Most of the image was crisp and clear, but some small sections were seemingly out of focus and slightly fuzzy. I haven’t had this problem with Ravensburger before, but it’s worth mentioning for this puzzle specifically.

I enjoyed this puzzle very much, I think the choice of these 3 Pixar movies was excellent, probably because I’ve seen all three of them and the kids and I loved them all. The bright colors and adorable characters made this wonderfully fun to assemble. The edges of the movies reels and the blue background gave it a bit of a challenge, but it wouldn’t be as much fun if it were too easy. 🙂

Even with the small quality issue, this was a great puzzle and I still recommend it. For me it brought back memories of watching these movies with my kids when they were younger; how in the world is Toy Story 23 years old?!

Mountain Vigil

On January 15, 2018January 15, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

My black belt thrift store shopper knows what I like, and bought this puzzle just for me, because for some odd reason I love puzzles with quilts. I don’t know why I like them so much, that’s just how it is. This was such an interesting quilt puzzle, I had the best time assembling it! Unfortunately it was missing 2 pieces, bummer. 😐

This puzzle was mostly the normal Sunsout quality – good thickness, variety of piece shapes, nice image reproduction. But it was also interesting in that it was grid cut instead of random, and the fit was much less tight than normal – I enjoyed both of these things. Normally I find the fit of the “regular” rectangular Sunsout puzzles a bit too tight but the fit of this puzzle was just about perfect. Also, most Sunsout puzzles I’ve done have been randomly cut but this was grid (ribbon) cut; I don’t know if I’ve ever done a grid cut Sunsout puzzle. I like both random or grid cut puzzles – I swing both ways. 😉

The artist, Rebecca Barker, likes quilts too as all of her puzzles are “quiltscapes”; with a quilt at the forefront and a secondary scene it blends into in the background. They’re so interesting and colorful, I love them and hope to find more. This one was a joy to assemble and even easier than I thought it would be, especially the background scene of the proud stag and his family. Just beautiful!

This puzzle is out of print, but if you find one I definitely recommend it. It was fun and interesting from beginning to end. 👍

Millside Picnic

On January 10, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve assembled an Americana type puzzle, and it was nice to get back to it. Sometimes it feels boring to do the same type of puzzle over and over again, and so I step away from it. That’s what I did with the Americana/Wysocki/Heronim images – I needed a break. For some reason, though, when I looked at this puzzle I wanted to get assembling right away. Perhaps I had taken a long enough sabbatical and this puzzle was what I needed. 🙂

I absolutely enjoyed this puzzle, the quality was very good, the image was excellent for puzzling and I enjoyed every part of the assembly. I especially enjoyed assembling the houses, although I’m not sure why. I believe this was my first Bonnie White puzzle, but looking through her puzzles available at Puzzle Warehouse, I might be wanting to try some more. They’ve even got some beautiful ♦diamond♦ shaped puzzles I’d love to try.

Here’s hoping we can find more Bonnie White puzzles at the thrift stores, or that someone sends me some to review. 😉

Wavy Rainbow

On December 26, 2017February 1, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles10 Comments

Isn’t this a gorgeous image? I fell in love with it and had to get it, even though at the time I was trying not to buy more puzzles. I fell off the wagon, so to speak.

I’ve done 3 other puzzles from this company, All Jigsaw Puzzles, and I’ve never had any problem with their quality. This one though, slight problem – the color was coming off in a few spots. You can’t really tell in the picture above, but there were small bits on the edges of a few pieces where the color was coming off. I then glued the puzzle because I think it would be a beautiful wall-hanging. But spreading the glue around on the top of the puzzle with an old plastic credit card pulled more color off. I could see flecks of color in the glue before it dried, and once it was completely dry there were places where the color came completely off. This has always been my method when gluing puzzles and I have never come across this problem before.

It only affected this small portion of the puzzle, which I found odd, but perhaps it has something to do with the ink used? Whatever the reason, it isn’t something you’d want to have happen to your puzzle. I emailed the company and got an immediate response; they took care of me with excellent customer service. As I said previously, I’ve worked 3 of their other puzzles and have not had any quality issues before. The quality has been very good and I believe this was just an anomaly, they assured me they would be communicating with their manufacturer to fix the problem. I bought another of their Impuzzible images at the same time as this puzzle, and will be posting about it here. Hopefully there won’t be any more color lifting.

Quality issue aside, I enjoyed this puzzle very much. Even though it may look difficult, I didn’t find it too much of a challenge. For me the red to orange section was the most difficult, my eyes had a hard time distinguishing the difference in the colors. The rest of it was actually quite easy and fun. It really is stunning in person, and I very much enjoyed assembling mine.

This image has also been made into a puzzle by Buffalo under the name Vivid Color Challenge, in case you don’t want to take a chance on a quality problem but would still like to give the puzzle a try. It’s gorgeous!