A Walk on the Pier

On July 5, 2020July 5, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

A Walk on the Pier was a great puzzle, with fantastic artwork by Art Poulin that made for quite an entertaining assembly. The quality was wonderful as well, with large, thick EZ grip pieces that fit together very well. I had a great time with this one!

Sometimes, all the Americana type of images on jigsaw puzzles all seem to blend in and have the same type of scene – over and over and over again. Every so often I find myself passing up the ones in my to do “pile” because even though it hasn’t been assembled yet, it just looks too familiar. I still love Charles Wysocki, Jane Wooster Scott, Heronim, and the many other Americana artists whose images make for great puzzles, but now and again they all start to look alike and I find myself needing to take a break from those images.

This one though was just what I was looking for at the right time, and the assembly was great fun!

A Walk on the Pier 1

The detail in the tackle shop window is amazing. Hubby would be able to spend hours in there, that’s for sure.

A Walk on the Pier 2

I love lighthouses, and have also in my mind romanticized living in one. My injury has caused me to “socially distance” myself from most of the world anyway, and after almost six years I’ve had a lot of practice at it. Being alone in a lighthouse with just my family around me sounds absolutely wonderful to me; imagine how quiet it would be as well! Plus, doesn’t it look like it would have the most beautiful view?

Hound of the Baskervilles

On June 23, 2020June 23, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles8 Comments

This is another interesting but entertaining Charles Wysocki image, and even at only 300 pieces it made for a little bit of a challenge. The tree in the foreground, for example, was more difficult than I gave it credit for. I thought this one would be a breeze, and some parts were, but it wasn’t as easy as I’d assumed it would be.

The name didn’t make sense to me until I really started to look at the image; obviously the storyteller in the foreground is telling the story of The Hound of the Baskervilles to his audience. At least that is the conclusion I came to.

Hound of the Baskervilles 1

Traveling storytellers used to be a thing. Back before radio, television, and telephones, all you got was the information found in the newspapers. There were serial stories in some papers, but unless you lived in a city or town you didn’t have access to a paper every day or week.

Hound of the Baskervilles 2

This man seems as though he’s not just telling a story, he’s acting parts of it out and giving it all he’s got. Good for him! Without access to anything other than stories from their families, I can imagine that it would have been terribly exciting to have a professional storyteller in the neighborhood to tell stories you’d never heard of. Imagine having a Sherlock Holmes detective story told to you in such a dramatic fashion, it must have been so entertaining!

Hound of the Baskervilles 3

I’m admitting that I have no idea what this sign means. If this town is where food processing is done, it’s possible that marinating was done specifically in one place. But this doesn’t look like a food processing plant, it looks like someone’s home. I’m intrigued, but confused about the name.

This puzzle was fun to put together, had great quality, and a beautiful image. There’s not much more you can ask for, is there?

Coastal Getaway

On June 22, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

Coastal Getaway is such a pretty scene, and it made for an entertaining assembly. There are only 300 EZ grip pieces that are thick and sturdy, with a nice fit and stellar image reproduction. I always enjoy puzzles with large pieces, for some reason they make me extremely happy. 🙂

Coastal Getaway 1

I love lighthouses; the color of the light is so beautiful on this one, and the trees all around it are gorgeous.

Coastal Getaway 2

The stairs leading down to the beach were really fun to assemble, and I love the shells tucked up at the top; it’s something I would have done when I was younger so I wouldn’t forget to take them with me when I went home.

Coastal Getaway 3

There’s something about this sailboat, and the lone person sailing it – I love the look of it; Alan Giana’s artwork is colorful and beautiful. This whole puzzle was a great image with lovely quality and I had a great time!

Bulldog with Butterflies

On June 17, 2020June 17, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

That sweet, beautiful, face is absolutely gorgeous! But I gotta tell you that it still burns my biscuits that they got the name so completely wrong; THAT IS NOT A BULLDOG! I’d love to change the title of this post, but if someone else wants to find this puzzle for themselves they need to know the actual title, so I grudgingly left it the way it is. But in my heart I know that it’s a Boston with Butterflies. 🐾🦋

If you haven’t read this blog before you might not know that the sweetest member of my puzzle posse is an adorable purebred Boston Terrier named Buddy, and he makes me smile and gives me love every single day. I know what a Boston Terrier looks like! Mine is a bit of a mutant though, he’s extremely big for his breed. Whatever the opposite of a “runt” is, that’s my Buddy. The average Boston weighs between 13-16 pounds. You ready for this? Brace yourselves……my “little” guy weighs 33 pounds! He’s not the least bit fat, he’s just much, much taller, longer, and bigger than the typical Boston. My neighbor across the street has a beautiful female, and Buddy is almost twice as tall as she is! He’s the “Andre the Giant” of his breed. 😉 (On a completely different topic, who doesn’t love Andre the Giant as Fezzik in The Princess Bride? “No more rhyming now, I mean it!” – “Anybody got a peanut?”)

Back to the puzzle. The quality was good/fair; the pieces are on the thinner side and the fit was a bit loose. On the plus side, there was a very good variety of piece shapes and the image reproduction was good as well. For me it didn’t matter much either way, it was all about the image.

Bulldog with Butterflies 1

The butterflies were lovely, and they were the first thing to be assembled after the edges. The picture doesn’t do them justice, the colors are really lovely!

Cardinal has a whole line of images by Coco de Paris like this one – animals painted over the pages of a book. Most are silly and fun, and they make me smile; I especially love the group of ostriches wearing bathing suits, and the giraffe wearing glasses blowing a huge bubble with her gum! 😂

I tried to find a link to a whole bunch of them in one spot to share with you, but this being the middle of a pandemic many places are still closed and sold out of certain puzzles. You can look up Coco de Paris jigsaw puzzles and see many of the images from this line. They’re so fun!

p.s. Thank you Penny❣

Snail Mail

On June 13, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

This was my first puzzle back after many many days of no puzzling at all. For me, it’s always best when I get back to puzzles after any kind of break from them that I start with one that I know I will enjoy – collages are my happy place so that’s where I began.

The overall quality was good, but my one complaint was that many of the pieces were still connected. This puzzle was probably produced near the end of the run when the die had become dull, so all of the pieces weren’t cut all the way through. It isn’t the end of the world, and it wasn’t a big deal for me to separate them.

The pieces were thick and had a great variety of shapes. The fit was slightly loose, but not so much as to be annoying. The image reproduction was gorgeous with beautiful colors and crisp lines, and it really was a joy to assemble.

Snail Mail 1

The color of this stamp was the first thing I noticed – this picture doesn’t do it justice. Absolutely gorgeous!

Snail Mail 2

My first thought was that this would make a beautiful puzzle on it’s own. In fact, many of the stamps in this collage would make gorgeous puzzles by themselves.

Snail Mail 3