It’s National Game and Puzzle Week! 52 Pickup

On November 18, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Jigsaw Puzzling, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

Today is the start of National Game and Puzzle Week here in the US, which is perfect for taking some of the stress out of spending time with family over Thanksgiving. Is Aunt Matilda always making you wait hours and hours for your holiday meal? Set up a jigsaw puzzle to help pass the time, what a lovely way to spend time with your family and loved ones!

You’ll get no board game recommendations from me – it’s too easy to end up arguing (just my opinion, of course). I love board and card games, but hubby is unbelievably competitive, as are many other family members. A fun game of euchre with my parents ends up with the men getting frustrated with mom and I because we “don’t take it seriously”. Mom and I then purposely try to lose, which mean we almost always end up winning; and we giggle hysterically while it’s happening. It’s safe to say the husbands are unimpressed with our behavior. 😁 I’m a jigsaw puzzle gal all the way; everyone can help, you don’t need to explain the “rules”, and everyone wins. Viva le puzzle!

So onto today’s puzzle, I chose this one for today’s post because it’s a puzzle of playing cards which can be used for many games. This puzzle had me so enraptured that I almost couldn’t walk away. I kept coming back to it even though I wasn’t feeling well; I just had to get a few more pieces put in, and I had to know if all the pieces were there!

Another good quality non-traditional Ceaco. This one is called a Conversation Pieces Trompe L’oeil jigsaw puzzle. (trompe l’oeil is a visual illusion in art, it means to trick or deceive the eye to see the painting as a three-dimensional object) Ceaco has a few of these conversation pieces puzzles, but this is the first one we’ve found in the thrift stores.

I wasn’t planning to document this assembly, but mom was here at the beginning and helped me assemble most of the first part. She went home to get some things done, and I kept sending her updated pictures. So I’ve got pics of the assembly as I went along! We started with the face cards, they were harder to assemble than we bargained for!

Conversation Pieces 1

Next I assembled the rest of the cards that were face up, and I tried to place them all approximately where they belong in the puzzle. It sure doesn’t look like much, does it?

Conversation Pieces 2

The next morning I put together the edges; it wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as difficult as I’d thought either. I was so excited to get that done! All that’s left is to fill in. I can’t explain how engrossed I was in this puzzle and how happy it made me. So happy!

Conversation Pieces 3

I was hoping to have a picture of it glued and mounted on foam board and hanging in my daughter’s game room. Unfortunately, it’s not on the wall yet. Bummer. Still, we had a great time with this puzzle, and it looks so cool!

If you’re not up close to see the piece shapes it looks like cards strewn across a table. I think it’s going to look amazing on the wall! Perhaps over the holiday I’ll get it hung up – my daughter and her husband are hosting Thanksgiving this year in their new home. I’m bringing the pies, and something to hang up this puzzle! You might just see a picture of it sometime soon. 😎

Pups in Cups

On November 15, 2018November 15, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

How cute are these puppies? So darn cute! They were absolutely as much fun as I’d hoped. I was finally able to get the last 4 sets of these mini puzzles, and mom, my oldest son and I went a little “mini puzzle crazy” a couple of weeks ago and assembled 3 sets in one day! 1500 pieces in total all in one day. 🙂

It’s not hard to get that many pieces assembled when you’ve got a lot of help and you’re putting together a lot of very small puzzles. It was so much fun working together – we had the best time!

The quality of these mini puzzles is very good. The pieces are a good thickness and fit together well, and the image reproduction is excellent. My only problem is that the colored backing seems to make it difficult for the die to cut completely through, and there are pieces on each of the mini puzzles that aren’t completely separated. It’s a minor detail, but worth mentioning.

Pups in Cups was the set I most wanted to assemble, and they didn’t disappoint. It’s so much adorable cuteness in one puzzle! The brightly colored cups were easy and fun to assemble, and the pups were more of a challenge than I thought they’d be. It was a great combination.

Pups in Cups 1 — Look at those sweet, sad eyes!

It was hard to choose a favorite, they’re all so sweet (and they didn’t have a Boston Terrier). But in my opinion all puppies are cute, no matter the breed.

These mini shaped puzzles are so much fun, and such a blessing when I’m not able to get out of bed and sit at the puzzle table. If I’m feeling well enough I can sit up and work them on my white board, and if I’m not they’re small enough to assemble one by one on a cookie sheet. And they’re much less expensive than the wooden micro puzzles!

If you haven’t tried shaped puzzles before and you’re not sure about them, I would recommend giving these mini shaped puzzles a try. Each mini puzzle has a different colored backing so that you can sort them easily, or if you want to give yourself a challenge you can ignore the backing and treat it like a regular 500 piece puzzle. They’re completely entertaining to assemble and so adorable! 🐾🐶🐾

Berry Bucket

On November 5, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

Berry Bucket was completely entertaining to put together, and the finished image is beautiful! Great quality, the pretty summery artwork, and working together with mom made this an excellent all around assembly.

I worried that the sunflowers would be a frustrating, but surprisingly they were great fun; working from the center outward was the key. The greenery was the most difficult, but didn’t seem tedious or overwhelming at all. It’s just a great puzzle image that made for a wonderful assembly experience.

Jane Maday’s puzzles are so lovely, I need to find more of them!

Balloons Over Cottage Cove

On October 29, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

This hot air balloon image is very different to me than most of the others that you see on jigsaw puzzles. Most balloon images are very bright and colorful, this one is muted and understated; I love an image that’s different from the norm. 😉

Pastels and understated colors aren’t my first choice, but I find they’re fun to work with every once in a while.The nature of the artwork made this a bit more challenging, but in the end it’s such a pretty picture!

Doesn’t it look like a lovely place to visit? I love the look of the house, it feels so homey. And the balloon in the foreground has the brightest colors; but all the rest are very understated and more pastel-looking. It’s quite unusual for a hot air balloon puzzle; at least as far as the ones that I’ve seen.

All the greenery and flowers were much more difficult than I bargained for, and took more time than I thought they would. Being only 500 pieces I’d assumed it would go together quite quickly but that just wasn’t the case.

The quality was very good; there were a good variety of shapes, thicker pieces, and a beautiful image. The pale colors aren’t usually my thing, but I enjoyed this puzzle very much. It’s nice to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while. 🙂

3 Teddy Bears?

On October 28, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles3 Comments

Here’s a new one for you, I’m posting a puzzle that I DIDN’T do. It’s one of the worst quality puzzles I’ve seen in quite some time. As I was sorting it I became more and more disenchanted; and after putting together only a few pieces I put everything back in the box and put the box in the recycling.

First, the colors shown on the box do not match the puzzle – not by a long shot! The image on the box looks bright and fun, with only the bears themselves and the background looking somewhat muted. Many of the pieces are peach colored, but I don’t see that color anywhere on the box. There are so many of them that I’m thinking it must be either the yellow background behind the bears, or the tan background in the border. The other colors seem bright on the box, but are EXTREMELY muted on the pieces; the reds look pink, and the rest are just very, very pale. 😦

Second, there are 6 pieces total that have become totally delaminated. The image layer is completely separated from the cardboard backing. So basically there were 6 pieces of pretty paper in the box, along with 6 naked puzzle pieces. Not good. I was going to just fix them, but the other problems with the quality of this puzzle all added together made it seem not worth the time.

Third, there is no variety in the piece shapes; they are all what I call ballerinas. (2 prong/2 hole – 2/2 – two/two – tutu – ballerina – get it? Yes, my mind is a weird and interesting place) Normally I can deal with that if the image is entertaining, but the severely muted colors and other problems with this puzzle made it seem like it wasn’t going to be worth the effort.

Lastly, even after all the sorting, laying the pieces out on my trays, and seeing those first 3 problems I was still planning on working the puzzle. But once I started the assembly and felt the terrible way the pieces fit together it was the last straw. The fit was very spongy and the awful quality of the cardboard made it so that you couldn’t even tell from the back if the pieces were put together properly. With no variety in shape and the color issues it would have been a nightmare. Ugh!

Life is short, and puzzles are supposed to be fun – not a chore. If it doesn’t seem like fun why on Earth would I do it? Yes, we spent 99 cents on a puzzle that I’m not going to assemble, but it could be worse. We could have paid retail, we could have no more puzzles left to assemble, I could have a yeast infection – there are endless horrifying possibilities! Fortunately we only lost what amounts to loose change, there are hundreds of puzzles still here to assemble, my lady bits are perfectly fine, and I’ve learned what brand NOT to buy. All good things in my book. 😎

If you love puzzles and come across one from Giftco, set the box down and back away! We puzzlers deserve better.

*This puzzle was not named anywhere on the box, so I’ve given it an uninspired name – 3 Teddy Bears. The artwork on the box looks so adorable; it’s a pity it was licensed to this company.