King Dog

On April 9, 2017May 18, 2023 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Who couldn’t love a face like that? One look at this puzzle and we just had to get it and get it done!

300 piece puzzles are fun to put together in an afternoon, or even less time if you’re working with someone else. This puzzle was no different, and we just loved this adorable dog! The pieces weren’t too bad, and it was a large piece puzzle, so the finished product was much larger than we anticipated (18 x 24). That’s alright though, it seems like more of an accomplishment – look at this big puzzle we just finished!

Like I’ve said before, if you really love the image the puzzle is fun to put together even if the quality is less than amazing. The quality of this puzzle wasn’t too bad at all, so the assembly wasn’t a chore. I’m a bit of a puzzle snob, so when I see a puzzle I’ve had quality issues with before I tend to turn up my nose, but I also try to give every puzzle a chance. I’m not always successful, but I’m getting better at it.

It’s especially nice for me when I’m working on a puzzle that may be more difficult or time consuming to stop and work on a smaller or easier puzzle. I’m working on an extremely time consuming 1000 piece puzzle that I absolutely REFUSE to give up on – so it was very nice to spend the day over at mom’s where we were able to start and finish this puzzle in no time at all! This royal pup was too cute!

I love seeing all the different puzzles mom (black belt thrift shopper) finds at the thrift stores around here. They’re not all my cup of tea, but a lot of them I try anyway and find out that it was way more fun than I anticipated. 🙂

Cinque Terre

On March 10, 2017May 19, 2023 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This was a fun, quick puzzle that I did in one afternoon. It was so nice to start and finish a puzzle in one day rather than taking a couple of weeks!

Thrift store puzzle – 59 cents! How awesome is that? Gave me a fun afternoon, you can’t beat that for less than a dollar. Plus mom still gets to assemble it at her house. 🙂

I enjoy the larger piece Buffalo puzzles – they fit together quite well, have a nice variety of piece shapes and are the same great Buffalo quality as their puzzles with a larger piece count. The vivid collection has excellent image reproduction and are beautiful when assembled. I’m looking forward to finding more 300 piece puzzles at the thrift stores, it’s a wonderful palate cleanser after working on a large piece count puzzle!

September Gold

On February 18, 2017December 28, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This was another puzzle from a 10 in 1 box. Love quilts and Americana puzzles, so this was one I really wanted to do even though the quality was less than stellar.

Admittedly I don’t know all the ins and out of puzzle manufacturing, but can it be THAT much more difficult to make a die with more than one piece shape? And if it is, wouldn’t it be better to spend a little more time making a puzzle with interesting pieces than to have one with only one boring shape?

Anyway, I very much enjoyed the artwork by Diane Phalen, which is the main reason I completed this puzzle. The quilts and storefront, the flowers and apples, the woods and sky all made for a great image. If only the puzzle itself were as well made as the art. 😐

Confection Street

On February 5, 2017December 28, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Today is my Grama’s birthday. Since she’s been on my mind, especially since last week’s National Puzzle Day post I decided to do a post on this puzzle. It belonged to Gram. My mom decided to keep this puzzle of hers to assemble and glue. Mom did most of the assembly, but I did help and I glued and helped frame it.

Charles Wysocki’s artwork is a favorite, so this was an obvious choice to keep and it is a mosaic puzzle which was interesting to us, we’ve never seen that before. This is a Milton Bradley puzzle made in the 70’s. While doing research to find the name of this image I found that Milton Bradley made a few of these mosaic puzzles. I can’t imagine they were popular or a good seller, because OH MY GOODNESS was it horrible to work!

The pieces are in square shapes as you can see from the picture above, and nothing clicks together. This may seem like a good idea in theory, it looks like a mosaic tile work, how fun! NOPE. Every piece just lays next to the adjacent piece and heaven forbid you bump the table or the puzzle itself! We had to be extremely careful, and even the gluing was a chore and required both of us.

While we enjoyed the artwork and the pieces were thick enough, those were the only good things about this puzzle. A mosaic puzzle is not a good idea in my opinion, there needs to be some way to attach the pieces together or it just becomes a chore and is not fun at all. Fun is the reason we do puzzles in the first place!

This was a puzzle that belonged to Grama though, and that’s why we assembled it. My mother and I both love puzzles because of her, what a great gift! Thanks Gram, Happy Birthday!

Sanctuary

On February 1, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This was one of those puzzles that came in a “10 puzzles in 1 box” deal. I really liked this image, and one of the others which I did and took pictures of, but we didn’t keep the box or any of the puzzles. They went back to Goodwill. Not great quality. 😐 But even when we are not happy with a thrift store puzzle, we didn’t pay that much for it – $1.99 is the most we ever pay, so we’re not upset.

That being said, I still love the image in this puzzle. The colors are muted but pretty, the clothing on the fairy is fun and interesting, I just liked everything about it. It took me quite a while to find the artist and title of this image online, I had nothing to go on other than it was in a 10 in 1 box, that’s all I knew! I’m glad I could find it though to give credit to the artist for her beautiful artwork, Sheila Wolk this is a gorgeous image!

The pieces were very thin, there was no diversity in the piece shapes as they were all 2 hole 2 prong types. Boring. The pieces fit together well, which was a plus, but otherwise it was all about the picture for me. I liked the image so much I did it anyway! I’m glad I have the picture, because I still enjoy looking at it. It’s so pretty!