Follow Your Nose In Progress

Nose IP
Follow Your Nose – Buffalo – 300 pieces

So there was another puzzle sitting on my board waiting to be sorted and assembled, but I just wasn’t feeling it yesterday or this morning. So, back to the pile it went to wait for another day – and now I’ve got this adorable little 300 piece on the board that makes me extremely happy to look at, and I hope happy to assemble too!

Sometimes I’m just not in the mood for certain puzzles, and I’m trying to listen to my brain when I feel that way. I put pressure on myself occasionally to assemble a puzzle that “the readers will like”, forgetting that this blog is about the puzzles I choose to assemble. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I’m trying to do better. If I feel like putting together a bunch of very small piece count puzzles that’s what should show up here, even if many of my readers only put together larger puzzles.

Onward to a lot of adorable doggie faces! There’s quite a bit of fur along with lots of tongues and noses, but it is exactly the puzzle I want to be assembling right now. Even if it’s a little bit difficult it’ll be entertaining, and that’s what I’m looking for today. 🐶🐾🐕

Frosty Treats

Frosty Treats
Frosty Treats – Buffalo – 300 pieces

This 300 piece puzzle was great fun, more difficult and time consuming than expected, but still entertaining and beautiful to look at.

When my daughter found the Doug the Pug puzzles, she also brought me this and another 300 piece collage of dogs. She really is an enabler, and she’s quite good at it too! Do I have an awesome daughter or what!? I’ve only got the dog collage left, and my supply of smaller piece count puzzles is dwindling quite low. I may have to send her out on a puzzle finding mission very soon, she seems to know what puzzles I’ll enjoy even better than I do. 😎

Buffalo does a good job with their 300 piece puzzles, these were all excellent quality. The pieces are thick, the images are gorgeous and sharp, and the fit is very, very good. The colors on this puzzle are amazing and make for some delicious looking popsicles. They look absolutely luscious.

It makes me hungry for some frozen treats, we old ladies with hot flashes love frosty treats! When my inner child is playing with matches I’d love to dive headfirst into the freezer and cover myself with anything that would cool me down – but it’s nice to eat popsicles too I suppose.

Frosty Treats 1

Perhaps I need to get out more; I’ve never seen popsicles with kiwi or oranges in them! The colors are beautiful, and it looks like they would taste lovely. Mmmm. 🍧

Doug the Pug (Doughnuts)

Doug Donuts
Doug the Pug (Doughnuts) – Buffalo – 300 pieces

Both Doug the Pug puzzles were assembled in the same night. Insomnia is great for getting uninterrupted puzzle time; it’s not so great for the brain though. No sleep means tired, slow, hazy brain cells, which make puzzle assembly harder as you go along. Still, on this night it meant finishing two adorable puzzles and a nice long nap later that day. 😴

This image was much easier to assemble than cheesy Doug from yesterday, all the different doughnuts plus that curly tongue made it much simpler to sort and put together. They were both enjoyable in their own way, but this one is my favorite of the two – as far as assembly is concerned. If we’re just talking about the images, I think I prefer cheesy Doug.

Many thanks to my beautiful daughter who looks for puzzles wherever she shops. She gets out and about much more than I do, and keeps an eye out for puzzles her momma might like. What a sweetheart! ❤

Doug the Pug (Cheesy)

Doug Cheesy
Doug the Pug (Cheesy) – Buffalo – 300 pieces

My daughter was out shopping and sent me pictures of two Doug the Pug puzzles – she didn’t ask if I liked them, she knew I would – she asked if I HAD them. Smart girl, she knows if I’d seen them at the store that they definitely would have found their way into my cart. I didn’t already have them, and she felt the need to get them for me and bring them over to my house the same night.

It’s a good thing she did too; I couldn’t sleep that night and not wanting to disturb my husband’s sleep I got out of bed and spent a bit of time in the puzzle room. Doug got assembled in the wee hours of the morning, but I don’t think he minded much. He was probably sleeping off all of that cheese!

The puzzle went together relatively quickly. But I will say, however, that all that cheesy goodness made for a much more difficult assembly than I thought. The colors of pretty much all of the different cheesy treats were very similar, and once you add in the shirt there were a LOT of orange-y looking pieces to sort through.

Being a Buffalo puzzle, the quality was very good. The pieces fit together very well, and their signature zig-zag pieces even helped with the assembly. With so few pieces to sort through it was easy to separate the zigs and zags and put those pieces together right away. The image reproduction was quite good as well, the picture was sharp and clear with no blurry or fuzzy areas.

The finish was the only drawback, it was very shiny – much shinier than the average Buffalo puzzle. It made working under artificial lighting difficult, even with the light colored pieces there was glare that had me tilting my head to the side and wiggling the pieces back and forth to make sure what I was looking at or if I had the right piece.

Doug Cheesy 1.JPG

What an adorable, cranky, kissable face! Of course, Doug the Pug’s moneymaker is most definitely that face – and when I say money maker it is no joke. This dog has an Instagram account, his own Facebook page, and of course he’s on Twitter. All of these social media accounts have millions of followers, he’s been in music videos, is a New York Times bestselling “author”, has his own line of merchandise, and makes many celebrity appearances. He and his owner are rolling in the dough, all from his face that is so appealing, grouchy, sweet, expressive, and stone-faced all at the same time.

I hope you enjoyed this post, because Doug will be making another appearance tomorrow with another puzzle. 🐶🐾🐶

Review: Dog Stamps Quilt

Dog Stamps
Dog Stamps Quilt by Barbara Behr – Bits and Pieces – 300 pieces

Dog Stamps Quilt – hmmm, a collage with dogs, I wonder if I liked it? It won’t be much of a spoiler for me to tell you I adored it! It had everything going for it before I even opened the box, and luckily once it was opened the quality was just as good as the artwork.

Bits and Pieces is a brand I normally only buy second hand because of some very bad experiences with their puzzles. When I saw this image though, and the fact that it was only 300 pieces, I had to throw caution to the wind and give it a try. And I’m very glad I did! The pieces were very thick, with an excellent variety of shapes that fit together very well. The offset, almost wavy grid cut made for some fascinating piece shapes that sometimes seemed almost geometric, and the interesting way they fit together made for an absorbing and entertaining puzzle.

Dog Stamps 1

These adorable puppies jumped right out at me when I was sorting; first of all, their little faces look like they’re about to get into a lot of mischief, and secondly the background is a beautiful shade of blue that stood out in a sea of brown and tan pieces. Their faces and expressions are just too cute!

Dog Stamps 2

This little guy had such sad, sweet eyes. I had to take a close-up picture of this stamp; it’s just too sweet to pass up, and I think it would make a great puzzle image on it’s own.

Overall I was quite impressed with the quality of this puzzle. I find that many 300 piece puzzles with large pieces have thick chipboard that is quite sturdy, even if the larger piece count puzzles from the same brand aren’t as thick. Bits and Pieces is a brand I don’t usually endorse, but in this piece count I have no reservations in giving this puzzle a thumbs up. It’s great quality and an excellent image, and if the artwork makes you smile it is definitely recommended. Two doggie paws way up! 🐾

Details:

  • Title:                  Dog Stamps Quilt
  • Artist:                Barbara Behr
  • Brand:               Bits and Pieces
  • Piece count:     300 pieces
  • Size:                  Approx. 18 x 24 in. (46 x 61 cm)
  • Purchased:      New

Quality:

  • Board:               Very good
  • Cutting:             Very good
  • Image:               Very good
  • Box:                   Average
  • Fit:                     Very good
  • Puzzle Dust:     Small amount
  • Piece cut:          Offset grid cut
  • Piece shapes:   Very good variety
  • Finish:               Slightly shiny finish, lays flat

Overall Rating:      Very good, highly recommended