Puppets & Marionettes by Jay Burch – Pomegranate – 300 pieces
Creepy, right? I know! I specifically bought this one because these puppets and marionettes look extremely disturbing – at least they do to me. I thought it would perfect for Halloween; can you imagine these things coming to life and coming after you? Yikes!
Most of the easiest pieces to pick out have been put together and once the VERY ominous-looking clown at the bottom is done it’ll start to get more difficult. Luckily I think all the strings coming down will help out a bit, so maybe it won’t be as bad as it would seem.
I’m really enjoying the Pomegranate quality, the pieces are very thick and the fit is exceptional. Whatever puzzle comes next is going to pale in comparison.
I’ve got one more puzzle I want to get finished soon in time for October/Halloween and one for the Day of the Dead; otherwise I’m all out of macabre, spooky images. It’s my favorite holiday, I should have more puzzles for it!
Magical Journey by Jan Patrick Krasney – MasterPieces – 300 pieces
My youngest son picked this puzzle out when we were at the bookstore, and he did a good job – it was much more difficult than it looks! Of course it could be that I finished up the last 100 pieces or so at 2 am, perhaps lack of sleep was the challenge, not the image. 😫🛏
I think the only reason he picked out this puzzle was the fact that it has an owl in it, and he’s been obsessed with them for quite a while now. Whatever the reason, it was more entertaining than I thought it would be for an image that I don’t think I would have chosen for myself.
The quality was excellent, and that is not something I usually say about a MasterPieces puzzle; they’re in the middle tier of puzzle companies in my opinion. But this puzzle was all around excellent: thick pieces that fit together very well, an excellent variety of piece shapes, and a crisp and clear image reproduction. It’s the second MasterPieces in a row that was such good quality, I was duly impressed!
If your eyesight is good enough you can read what’s on these postcards.
Did anyone notice the puzzle pieces when you first looked at the completed puzzle? I certainly didn’t. It didn’t register with me until I was sorting the pieces; I had to look at the box image again and see where they were.
One my favorite type of pictures to take. The fit was so good with this one that it stands up on it’s own. Truly, a wonderful all around quality puzzle that I enjoyed very much. 😍
Rainbow World by Michael Searle – MasterPieces – 300 pieces
This image is quite an assault on the senses (my son picked it out), but the puzzle was excellent quality and I enjoyed the assembly very much – in spite of the eyeball blistering artwork. 😲
This was the best quality MasterPieces puzzle that I can remember assembling. The pieces were quite thick with a very good variety of shapes, the fit was excellent, the reproduction is bright and crisp – overall just a great quality puzzle and I was duly impressed.
The fit was so impressive that I even got one of my favorite types of pictures….you guessed it!
I was so confident in the fit that I took this picture first, before making sure I had a good “normal” picture for the post. If I’m not mistaken I have never been able to take one of these pictures with a MasterPieces puzzle before – this puzzle really impressed me!
Also, this is a glow in the dark puzzle. I’m not always a fan of these types of puzzles, only because of the tactile feeling of the pieces. They can feel grainy, almost like there is sand glued to the puzzle, and this one did as well. I can usually deal with it, as most GITD puzzles are smaller piece counts; but I’m not a fan of the way it feels in my hands.
Grainy feeling or not, I got a FANTASTIC glow in the dark picture!
My Favorite Color by Velvet Spectrum – Buffalo – 300 pieces
This gorgeous image is turning out to be easier than I thought it would be – so far. Finding the right colors hasn’t been too difficult, and what you see here went together really quickly. I didn’t finish sorting until this morning, and put this together in just a few minutes.
Once I start trying to assemble those large words it may become more of a challenge, but you never know. At least I never seem to know what images will be easy or hard, usually my perception of how it will go together turns out to be wrong.
Oh well, it’s fun to be surprised by puzzles sometimes, right? Perhaps if they were all exactly how you imagine them to be there wouldn’t be much point in assembling them. I don’t know. 🤷♀️
I’m waxing poetic this morning, perhaps I need more sleep – or more coffee.
Tea Time Terrors by Steve Crisp – Hua Cao Shu Mu – 300 pieces
This is a very cute image (especially if you’re a cat person), but unfortunately it was attached to a puzzle of pretty poor quality. This is another of my thrift store purchases, and I was excited to try a new brand – I’m sorry to say it wasn’t good at all.
Hua Cao Shu Mu is a new company to me, and I don’t know how long they’ve been in business. Perhaps they’re a company that popped up during the pandemic to take advantage of the run on jigsaw puzzles. The puzzles are made in China, and unfortunately the quality left a lot to be desired in my opinion. All the pieces were almost exactly the same shape and there were false fits everywhere – one of my pet peeves. The image reproduction was quite fuzzy in some places and the finish was extremely shiny. It comes with a poster that was exactly as big as the assembled puzzle – perhaps that would be good for older puzzlers with eyesight issues. The chipboard was thin, but sturdy, and had the “sharp” white backing that I am not fond of. In addition, the back was lettered from A to F, to assist in sorting and/or assembling the image.
I’ve done a puzzle before that had printing on the back to help with assembly – an image of Noah’s Ark by Eric Dowdle that was a “Jigsaw Puzzle for Dummies”. That one was more designed to help you put it together piece by piece, this puzzle seems to have the letters to assist in sorting more than actual assembly.
Wanting to get a sense of it I did sort out all the “A” pieces and then put them together. It’s fine if it helps you enjoy your puzzles, but it really isn’t for me. I put together the rest of the puzzle as I normally do without regard to the letters on the back. (It could be helpful though, especially with this brand and all the false fits that this puzzle has to offer.)
This came in a box with three separate cat/window puzzles, I think they may all be by Steve Crisp but haven’t done too much googling to be certain. There is no mention of the artist anywhere in or on the box or poster, I had to look it up myself – which makes me question whether or not this image was actually licensed to this company.
There’s been quite a bit of theft from artists in the past few years, and with the run on puzzles during the pandemic and new companies jumping into the market…well, you know what I’m saying. I have no proof that’s what went on here, but I’m skeptical about whether or not these images were actually sold to this company.
As usual when working with a new brand I was hoping for a great quality puzzle, but was quite disappointed in this one; it was nowhere near as good as I’d hoped for. At some point I’ll get to the other two puzzles in this box, but at the moment I’m just not feelin’ it. 😢
