Rainbow Donuts by Julie Seabrook – Good Puzzle Co. – 500 pieces
Gorgeous image on a fair quality puzzle, I enjoyed the assembly regardless – cause I love a rainbow image! This was my first puzzle from this brand, which I understand is the eco-conscious line of Galison puzzles. Hmmm. I’m not a fan of Galison puzzles, but this one wasn’t bad.
All the pieces were ballerinas, which is pretty boring if you ask me. Two male ends/two female ends, same shape. Boring. The fit was a little loose, but the image reproduction was very nice and it wasn’t too shiny. Overall I’d give this one a fair rating.
Sorry I don’t have much to say about this one. It was only ok. Love the image but the puzzle quality itself left something to be desired. I don’t know that I’d recommend buying this one new, but if you can find it at a thrift store or resale shop it’s worth it. The assembly itself was fun and the image is lovely.
Defence Against the Dark Arts – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 500 pieces
Is this not a fantastic image for the month of October? I think it is, so here we are. Honestly I wasn’t sure how this one was going to go for me, as there is a LOT of black in it even though it seems very colorful and I wasn’t sure how these aging eyes of mine would deal with all the darkness. Luckily with the help of some eyeglasses and an excellent light source it wasn’t too bad at all. 👓🕯
I cannot be held responsible for this puzzle purchase as every Harry Potter puzzle on the Wentworth website was 70% off back in June, and I was left unsupervised with access to my bank account. Consequently, of the fourteen puzzles that were available nine of them made it into my shopping cart. Getting a QUALITY 500 piece wooden puzzle for such a great price was just too good to pass up, so I didn’t! I bought many different sizes: two 500 pieces, a 450, a 225, a set of four 65 pieces, and several 250’s (which I consider to be the perfect size for a Wentworth). This is the second puzzle from this purchase that I’ve assembled, and it was an absolute joy.
If you read My Jigsaw Journal regularly you might remember this picture from the in progress post I did back in August when this puzzle was assembled. The whimsies in this puzzle are absolutely fabulous – with images of Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape, and even Crookshanks, Scabbers, and Hedwig,. I love all of these figures, and truly appreciate all the work that must have gone into them.
I’m not sure what it is that I love so much about this little section, I just know that it makes me happy even just to look at it. It was a lot of fun to put together and still makes me smile even as I’m typing this up. 😍
Normally I show the entire back of a wooden puzzle, especially when the shapes are Victorian cut or just interesting to me. The shapes for most of these pieces were “normal” and so even though I took a picture of the back I decided to only show you this little part of it. You couldn’t tell unless you were really paying attention, but Scabbers’ whiskers extend into two of the pieces next to him. I didn’t notice at all until I flipped it over. There are a few of these extensions into surrounding pieces for a couple of the other whimsies as well. It makes me really appreciate all the work that went into these puzzles, even more than I already did!
For some reason I just dumped out all the pieces onto my board and flipped them over with no sorting, not even the edges. It was chaos! As the assembly went on I realized that 500 pieces is a bit too many for me to puzzle that way. It’s ok with a smaller piece count, but for this stuck-in-her-ways old lady, I think anything over 300 pieces will need to be sorted from now on. Lesson learned.
Chaos not withstanding, this puzzle made me tremendously happy. Buying it made me happy. Looking at the box made me happy. Finding all the whimsy pieces made me happy. And assembling it made me very happy. 😄
This puzzle was unbelievably frustrating, to say the least! But I loved the movie and really wanted to get another thrift store puzzle done and out of here to help clear off my shelves. So even though I knew it would be tough, off we went!
Cardinal puzzles are on the lower end of the scale as far as quality goes, in my opinion. I’ve actually done some of their puzzles that have been really good, but most are just fair. There is a good variety of piece shapes, but the image reproduction can sometimes be fuzzy making it more difficult to build your image, and the fit is many times loose and floppy, making it a nightmare to move pieces around. This one was unfortunately on the low end of the scale, with an extremely loose fit and indistinct and blurry image.
Nevertheless I jumped right in, knowing it would be a rough assembly. I’m not sure if I wanted to challenge myself or if I just really wanted to do it and be done with it. Whichever reason spurred me on, I’m glad I did it – and my youngest once again helped me with it. Not only did he help, he came in to assist at the most difficult part – when all that was left were white pieces that I had to sort by shape in order to fill it in!
After completing everything with color there were approximately 140-150 pieces that were pure white and I sorted them by shape in order to finish without tearing out my very gray hair. Because the fit was so loose and floppy, it made finding the right pieces even more difficult. At times there could be many pieces that all seemed to fit in one spot. Unbelievably frustrating.
So I found an image online of a completed puzzle and used that to at least let me know what shape I was looking for. You may consider that “cheating”, but there actually is no such thing as cheating when jigsaw puzzling – unless you’re in a competition. Slogging through 150 pieces of solid white with a fit you can’t be sure of wasn’t my idea of a good time, so I used the image of the finished puzzle to find what piece shape I should be looking for and completed the puzzle that way. My son helped during this last stage, and together we got it done in pretty good time.
This is only the second time I’ve used this technique. The first time I used it was when one of the sections of the giant Disney puzzle fell when I was trying to get a good picture; 4,032 pieces fell everywhere and weeks of work went down the drain. Even thinking about it now makes me anxious and upset! Anyway, there were a couple of pictures taken before it fell, so I used them to help me re-assemble the section quickly. It wasn’t cheating then, and it isn’t cheating now, not in my mind at least.
So even though the white pieces weren’t much fun at all the puzzle wasn’t too terrible, and I’m happy that it’s done and on it’s way out of my house and back to the thrift store. 😁
This puzzle was lots of fun, and the pieces felt almost luxurious! What’s not to love about a great collage image like this on an excellent quality puzzle?
I’ve been doing a lot of MasterPieces puzzles lately, and have enjoyed every single one. Their catalog of images has great variety to it, and their quality is even better than I remembered. They have a random cut which makes for interestingly shaped pieces, and the fit is exceptional. The image reproduction is crisp and clear, and the matte finish makes it easier to work with under artificial lights. Overall they’ve got great puzzle images on wonderfully made puzzles and I’m a fan!
As a child of the 70’s and 80’s, of course I watched all four of these tv shows – my favorite of these four was Scooby-Doo, but I liked them all. These shows are from way back when many tv shows actually had theme songs and again Scooby-Doo wins this battle, it was the best theme song of all these shows, with the Flintstones coming in a close second. I’ve been singing these songs in my head for quite a while now, and I’m having a great time reminiscing.🎶🎶
It’s getting less impressive, isn’t it? All these puzzles standing up, ho hum – so boring. Doesn’t matter to me, taking these pictures still makes me happy!
Fast Food Craving by Graffi*tee Studios – MasterPieces – 500 pieces
I enjoyed this puzzle, and even though it was a little more challenging than I bargained for it was an entertaining build – and I love the look of it!
This one came from a shopping trip out in the world where I picked up some 300, 500, and 1000 piece puzzles. I cannot seem to stop myself from buying more, even though there are PLENTY of puzzles here to keep me busy for a very, very, very long time. Most of the ones I purchased were MasterPieces, and I have to say I am truly loving their quality. Interesting shapes, great fit, beautiful reproduction, nice chipboard – they seem to have it all under control.
I never really thought about this, but there was a time when drive thru windows didn’t exist and people needed to be taught how to use them. So of course a sign like this might have been necessary. As a person who used to work in a fast food place I can tell you that people STILL don’t know proper etiquette and have to be told what to do or not to do. Turn off your windshield wipers people! You’re just throwing water on them.
How would you like this place? A restaurant with a sign that says JUST EGGS and maybe bacon? Yes please! I love breakfast and a good plate of eggs with some potatoes, toast, and maybe a little bacon sounds just about perfect right now. Yum.
You guessed it, I just had to. Apologies if these pictures don’t tickle your fancy, but they definitely make me smile. With all the crap companies out there making crap puzzles for a quick buck, having a great quality puzzle that fits so well you can stand it on it’s edges is quite a blessing to me. Standing up puzzles has been going on for more than a decade in my house, and it will continue till I’m gone or can’t puzzle any more. It just makes me happy, and what a great reason to do it, huh?
