Swiss Market Square

Swiss Market Square
Swiss Market Square – Victory – 200 pieces

My wonderfully sweet husband bought this for me as a surprise. I wish I could say I liked it, but I didn’t. Mom didn’t enjoy it either, we assembled it together. It’s an uninteresting image with a terribly loose fit – so loose that sometimes you couldn’t tell if the piece was correct or not because there is too much wiggle room; which is difficult for large areas of one color like the sky.

Victory is an old brand of wooden puzzle manufactured in the UK, and this is my first time giving them a try. I’m not a fan of the cut, except for the few whimsy pieces most of the rest are regular looking shapes. Most of the fun of wooden puzzles for me are the fantastically irregular and interesting shapes that using wood allows you to make. As I said, the fit was extremely loose as you can see in the picture below…

Swiss Market Square 1

I just pulled on the pieces and there’s this much play – it’s way too loose. I’m not making final judgement on the brand from this one puzzle; in fact hubby bought another one at the same time that I have yet to assemble. Perhaps that one will be a more interesting (to me) image and a less wobbly fit. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

Perhaps the other Victory puzzle is what I should be doing today – I haven’t worked a puzzle in a week and I need to get back in the swing of things soon, my queue is down to only 2 puzzles left! 😱😱

*just remembered I have a few pictures in my phone of the last several puzzles I’ve completed so I do have a few more days leeway before I’m out of puzzles to post – thank goodness!*

Summer Medley

Summer Medley
Summer Medley by Mandy Budan – StumpCraft – 207 pieces

This puzzle was unbelievably difficult, but so very entertaining! It’s from a new brand (to me) – I decided to try some smaller wooden puzzle companies, and I’m thrilled I found this one. From what I’ve seen so far, they make wonderful puzzles. 🙂

StumpCraft is a small company in Canada that crafts beautiful laser-cut puzzles that showcase the artwork of fellow Canadians. I was thoroughly impressed with the quality and cutting, and I can’t wait to try more of this brand. The color-line cutting made it much more challenging than it looks, and the difficulty level increased my enjoyment so much – I was able to turn off my brain and became completely engrossed in the assembly. Love, love, loved it!!!!

Summer Medley whimsies

The puzzle was beautifully cut, with fun whimsies (the beaver is my favorite), the fit was exceptional, and they were the thickest wooden pieces I’ve worked with so far. An excellent puzzle!

Garden Room

Garden Room
Garden Room by Kate Mason – Re-marks – 200 pieces

Garden Room was a lot of fun, I think mostly because I enjoyed having a smaller piece count puzzle with “regular” sized pieces. Most puzzles that are 300 pieces or less have the larger, EZ grip pieces. This one was only 200 pieces, but they were the size you normally see in a 1000 piece puzzle, I had a very good time assembling it!

I am feeling brave this weekend and have started a 1000 piece puzzle from a company I haven’t tried before; plus I’m trying to finish a very large 3D puzzle that I’m reviewing. Wish me luck!

Jungle Friends

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Jungle Friends – Ravensburger – 200 pieces

Even though this puzzle had 2 missing pieces it was still fun to assemble – I had a great time with it actually. 👍

Mom has quite the knack for finding awesome puzzles like this one at the thrift stores. I’m kinda missing all those awesome finds these days, she’s in the process of moving and doesn’t have time to go thrift shopping. (Besides, if she came home with more puzzles I think my dad’s head might explode – they still haven’t finished packing all the ones we already own!)

I enjoy kids puzzles very much, I’m a “grownup” but putting together a kids puzzle makes me just as happy as any adult puzzle ever could. Sometimes it’s not the puzzle, it’s the puzzling. ☺

Cupcakes!

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Cupcakes! – Re-marks – 200 pieces

This was a quick little 200 piece puzzle that I assembled in bed one evening while watching tv with my husband. It went together even more quickly than I thought it would, and was extremely entertaining.

Re-marks puzzles can sometimes be hit or miss, but this one had very good quality. In particular, the image reproduction was excellent with crisp lines and beautiful colors. The piece shape is a bit obvious in the finished image, but otherwise I had no problems with the pieces or the fit.

Mom took me to the store a few weeks ago so I could stock up on some smaller piece count puzzles and this is one of the ones we found. More often these days for me it isn’t as much about the image as it is about the piece count; I haven’t been doing many 1000 piece puzzles lately even though the majority of the puzzles here at the house are 1000 piece or higher. I was running out of smaller puzzles, and luckily we found this gem among all the others. 🙂