Flutter & Bright Beauty

On August 25, 2023August 25, 2023 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Flutter & Bright Beauty – Andrews & Blaine/Pintoo – 48 pieces each

It isn’t very often at all that one comes across a brand new type of jigsaw puzzle that they’ve never seen before – this is one of those rare times. Have you seen a “Double-Sided Brainteaser” jigsaw puzzle before? This was my first time.

My Dad found two of these puzzles in Mom’s things about a year after she passed, and although I started playing with them soon after he brought them to me, they inevitably got put aside. They were lost in the shuffle of my crazy life for a bit, and recently I took them out again. I finished the first one in July of this year.

Here’s the concept…

The box tells you that it’s easy to play anywhere since there is no tabletop required for laying out pieces – it’s all supposed to be handheld as there is only one piece out of the frame at a time.

The way to solve it is knowing when you take a piece out exactly where it belongs. Which leads to the next piece, etc. That isn’t the way I usually do it, and I couldn’t seem to get my set-in-her-ways-old-lady-brain to cooperate.

If I know where the first piece I take out belongs, that leads to me having to know where the piece that it’s replacing goes. I tried, believe me; but it just isn’t the way puzzles go together for me and it wasn’t something my brain seemed to want to help me with. I found it unbelievably frustrating. I felt stupid because I’m good at puzzles, so why couldn’t I just solve them in a different way?

At only 48 pieces I thought it would be quick and easy to assemble correctly, but my brain doesn’t work in the fashion required to solve this brainteaser puzzle the way it’s meant to be solved. Perhaps it’s old age, or OCD, or just years of assembling jigsaw puzzles differently – whatever the reason, I found that the best (or only) way for me to put this puzzle together was to take all the pieces out of the frame first. As I’m always telling you, whatever way works best for you is what’s best, right? 😉

In addition, unlike every other double-sided puzzle I’ve completed, when one side is correctly assembled the other side is not; there is no “cheating” and only finishing one side and getting two complete images. That’s a first for me too.

This seems to be a collaboration between Andrews & Blaine and Pintoo. The pieces are extremely thick plastic, and the fit is incredibly tight. It takes some work to push the pieces out of the frame, but it would have to be quite snug if you wanted the pieces to stay put at all. The pieces are all ballerinas (2 prong/2 hole) and all exactly the same shape. It’s a well made puzzle.

It’s quite small, very easy to throw into a backpack or a purse and take with you…

It’s quite the interesting concept, and even with my frustration I enjoyed trying out it even though it wasn’t made for the way my brain works. It seems as though these are no longer being manufactured, and the only place I was able to find them online was on eBay. Perhaps the price had something to do with the decision to stop making these – the box says it was originally $14.95 for one 48 piece puzzle!

I have one more of these yet to assemble, but it will definitely go faster now that I’ve realized the best way for me to put it together. The images are both photographs, this time of sea life. Nothing overly exciting, but it’ll still be fun. 🧩💚

What do you think? Is this something you’d want to try if you found one of them out in the wild? Is your brain wired so that you could assemble a puzzle this way?

Life Rules

On December 17, 2021December 17, 2021 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles5 Comments

Life Rules by Louise Carey – Andrews + Blaine – 1000 pieces

This was not an easy puzzle. Luckily, I was looking for a difficult/tedious puzzle to put on the board while I was working on all the micro puzzles for the holiday season – this one fit the bill perfectly. Putting together large letters isn’t as simple as some may think. This one tried to melt my brain!

I always love having words to assemble in a puzzle, but when the words are basically the whole image – or even when they’re just very large – it can become quite difficult. All the pieces are basically just the background color, and the color of the letter. And there were only four colors in this image, each color was used multiple times for their own set of words. It was quite the challenge.

The easiest part of this assembly was the sorting. I just had one tray for each color, and one container for any pieces that were only the background. I worked on one color at a time. Sometimes the font used for one quote was simple to find, but much of the time it wasn’t as easy to pick out the right pieces for a certain quote.

Because it was so tall and thin (13 x 37 in.), it was easy to push to the back of the board when I wanted a break from it – and that is exactly what I did. When I felt myself getting too frustrated I stopped and worked on something else. 😎

My fellow P.A.D.S. sufferer Penny sent me this several years ago, but I was never in the right frame of mind to work on it. I never have my puzzles in any order to be assembled, my brain has to be in the right “head space” to work on an image; so the puzzle I’m doing next has to speak to me in some way. This puzzle has previously never had much to say – except, “Put me back, you don’t want any of this today.”

Miss Penny has since been informed that she wasn’t getting this puzzle back – after all the work that went into this one I’ve glued the bleeping thing and will be hanging it in the puzzle room. I love the look of it, and couldn’t bear to disassemble it after all that effort!

Irises

On May 9, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This is another very small piece puzzle that mom found somewhere. The image is only the top of Van Gogh’s Irises, but it was lovely and challenging and I had the best time putting it together!

The two puzzles we have from this series were truly the best quality smaller piece puzzles that I’ve worked with. The pieces are thick and fit together extremely well, there is no wondering if you have placed the piece correctly or not. The image reproduction is very good, but seems a bit darker than the original artwork (from my non-artist point of view anyway). If mom finds any Andrews + Blaine small piece puzzles at the thrift store we’re definitely getting them!

The whole puzzle fit on a cookie sheet, and I assembled the entire thing while in bed. I haven’t been able to sit at my puzzle table for well over a week now, so all the puzzles I’m doing have to fit on my white board or something smaller so that I can do them while lying down or propped up. There’s another advantage of the tiny puzzle! 😉

I was actually a little afraid of this puzzle for a while, the image is a bit difficult. I found it to be quite calming to assemble though; and even if I had to sit and stare at them for a bit, I could find and place the pieces correctly. In the end though, I’ve discovered that I’m much braver about difficult images if there aren’t many pieces. I don’t think I’ll ever attempt Starry Night in 1000 or even 500 pieces; but I didn’t have a problem putting it together as a 40 piece wooden puzzle. If it’s super challenging my courage is directly related to piece count. 300 pieces or less? Sure! More than that? Probably not. Maybe 500 tops – maybe.

I really enjoyed this puzzle much more than I anticipated, just as much as the first one I assembled – Fairgrounds. You can’t really tell how small they are until you see the tiny little box they come in. I took a great picture of the puzzle box next to my coffee cup in that post!

It doesn’t look like these small puzzles are being produced by A + B anymore, but if you happen across one in a thrift store, go for it! It’s a nice change from larger piece counts, and just may be more fun than you think. 👍

Darling Doe

On December 9, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Another puzzle with only ballerinas – good thing this had interesting artwork too or it might not have been completed! The artwork is quite nice, and perfect for puzzling. It was a thrift store purchase, and even though it’s missing 2 pieces we still got our money’s worth.

Mom and I assembled this puzzle together on one of our visit/puzzle days – so much fun! Andrews + Blaine puzzles seem to be hit or miss quality-wise. The pieces were a good thickness and fit together well. But I really don’t care for puzzles with only one shape piece, it’s boring and makes the assembly more difficult. Although if the image is a good one I’ll put up with it; sometimes if the image makes for a fun assembly I barely even notice that all the pieces are the same. Andrews + Blaine have some beautiful images to choose from, I wish all their puzzles had a good variety of shapes as well.

Luckily the image of this puzzle was a good one, and we didn’t have too much trouble with large areas of the same color/pattern. It was definitely better that mom and I worked it together – she’s my favorite puzzle partner and many puzzles I wouldn’t want to do alone I have no problem doing with her. We’re an awesome puzzle posse! 🙂

Fairgrounds

On December 5, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles3 Comments

After attempting Winter Aspen, I consciously stayed away from very small piece puzzles. It took a while for my bruised ego to recover from my defeat, but eventually I decided to give them another try. I’m not sure where they came from, but mom had two 126 piece puzzles in clear plastic boxes. The completed puzzle measures approximately 3.9 x 11.8 inches (10 x 30 cm) They’re so cute and tiny, you could take them anywhere!

The image of this one looked fun (and decidedly easier than the other – Van Gogh’s Irises), so Fairground was it. The assembly was pretty quick and straightforward; it was a bit more challenging than the average 100 piece children’s puzzle, but it was very enjoyable. The pieces were very nice, thicker than other small puzzles that I’ve worked. They were sturdy and fit together quite well. The image reproduction is clear and bright; I was impressed with the quality of the entire puzzle.

To be honest, I didn’t even realize until I was finished that the two “towers” on either side of the image were made of doughnuts! 🍩 Once I saw the doughnut towers I realized it was artwork by Eric Joyner. I’d seen a few puzzles with his artwork from Artifact Puzzles when I was trying to decide on the image for my first wooden puzzle. I love the whimsy of the works, and the silliness – not to mention the bright, fun colors. There are even a few of his puzzles on my wish list of Artifact Puzzles.

I think I’ve gotten over my inability to complete Winter Aspen, and if there’s a world’s smallest puzzle that looks like fun I’ll probably attempt it. I still have Van Gogh’s Irises, same clear plastic box, same piece count – but it’s going to be a tad more of a challenge. Perhaps I’ll attempt it on a day when it feels like all the brain cells are firing at maximum capacity. Today – it ain’t that day. 🤨