My Darlin’ Daughter

On February 16, 2020March 5, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling8 Comments

My sweet darlin’ daughter took it upon herself to be the Valentine’s fairy this year and put together gift bags for the entire family – I raised a fantastic girl who grew up to be the most amazing, selfless, thoughtful woman I know. The whole family is doing their best to get through all the “firsts” after losing a loved one, and she decided to try and make our first Valentine’s Day without her beloved grandmother a good one for us all. I’m so proud of her and how she truly wants to take care of us all. 💝

She did a great job, and of course she went a little overboard and for my present I received the most adorable wooden puzzle from Artifact! How sweet is my girl? So sweet!

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This puzzle is just the cutest! The artwork is by Randal Spangler, and I don’t think I’ve assembled any other puzzles with his artwork before. I don’t know where he’s been hiding, but I adore the look of this one and hopefully I’ll be able to find more puzzles with his images on them. 🙂

I’ve only just started working on it, and have already succumbed to my OCD; the pieces are all laid out on the board in very orderly rows. I started with the pieces just all over the board willy nilly, but my brain can’t function well with things in such disarray. And there’s something very soothing about getting all the pieces lined up neatly, I can’t really explain it. My hunch is that many of us who love jigsaw puzzles have a little bit of the OCD, and putting things right by getting the picture put back together gives us immense satisfaction.

The pieces are very squared off and geometrical looking, but that doesn’t mean it’s overly easy, because it most definitely hasn’t been so far.

Catastrophe IP

I love the interesting cut and the squared off connectors, and I’m looking forward to seeing the completed puzzle – it’s so adorable! It shouldn’t take too long, the puzzle is only 182 pieces so it should be completed today if all goes well.

Thank you to my darlin’ sweet baby girl for the amazing gift, I love it – but I love you more! 💗

The Messenger

On May 17, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles9 Comments

Mom and I assembled this gorgeous puzzle together, and had a great time with it! Many thanks to Penny, my email pen pal and fellow puzzle blogger who sent this in a puzzle swap. We loved that we just got a bag of pieces with no image – that meant more fun for us!

I didn’t take a picture of the whimsies beforehand, but I did turn the puzzle over to see the outline of pieces from the back. It has odd coloration on the back though, and it’s difficult to make out all the shapes.

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There were a bunch of turtle shapes, a globe, an alarm clock, what looks like a person standing in front of a fire, and in the center a small tableau with 2 elephants in front of a mountain range. I love the Roman numerals around the border too – I was so proud when I figured out that they would be in order around the edge! Our favorite though was the large multipiece turtle…

The Messenger 1

The irregular edge is supposed to look like the edges of books stacked on each other. It took me a bit to realize that the edges weren’t going to be straight. I was so absorbed in looking at the pieces and colors that I didn’t see that there weren’t straight edges!

Awesome puzzle, great quality, beautiful image!

In Progress

On May 7, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

The Messenger

So I didn’t lie to you all yesterday, I actually started a puzzle! My fantastic friend and fellow puzzle blogger Penny swapped puzzles with me and one of them was this wooden puzzle by Artifact called The Messenger.

Mom came over in the afternoon and we got going on this beauty – it’s gorgeous so far! I received the puzzle in a plastic bag so we have no image to work off of – we’re fine with that. 😁

I remember reading Penny’s review of the puzzle several years ago, and I’ve seen it before on Artifact’s website; we could look up the image if we really needed to, but I enjoy spending time with the pieces and figuring it out. Check out the interesting edge – love it!

Thanks again Penny!

Tall Tower

On December 17, 2018December 16, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

Tall Tower was a tall order! We started assembling it on Thanksgiving Day, and didn’t finish until December 3rd. It was super challenging, but the best part was that I got to work on it with both my mom and my oldest son. 💖

I purchased this puzzle during a sale at Artifact Puzzles earlier in the year, and it took me months to be in the right mood for it. My weird old lady brain makes absolutely NO sense sometimes. Take it from me, getting old definitely ain’t for sissies. 😉

The whimsies for this puzzle are so adorable! I didn’t realize it until I was dis-assembling the puzzle, but some of the whimsy pieces are shaped like images in the puzzle, it’s so creative! Alas, it was too late for pictures to show close-ups of the image and the whimsies. My apologies.

Tall Tower whismies

There were a lot of musical figures, in addition to plenty of animals. It’s so fun to work with them. I truly enjoy the detail you’re able to get with wooden puzzles; you could never make such small, intricate cuts on a regular cardboard puzzle.

This is the first Artifact puzzle I’ve worked with small dropouts in the whimsies, they make the image even more interesting in my opinion (see the top left corner, and the picture below). It’s not a true dropout in the sense that it isn’t negative space that you have to work around, but I still like the look of it. And I didn’t even notice the flock of sheep until we were done and I was taking photographs. Love it!

Tall Tower back

Such an interesting cut! This puzzle gave us quite a mental workout, but it’s always worth it in the end if you’ve enjoyed yourself. Mom did the majority of the work on this one since the puzzle stayed at her house, but my son and I helped too – shout out to my puzzle posse!

Unseen

On September 22, 2018November 4, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

In honor of the official first day of fall, today’s puzzle is a spooky one I’ve been waiting to post since I finished it at the beginning of August. It’s “Halloweeny” and I’ve been keeping it till it was the right time. Fall brings Halloween (my favorite holiday), and therefore today is the perfect day for this puzzle!

This is the most difficult, challenging, and wonderfully frustrating wooden puzzle I’ve ever assembled. I bought it during the clearance sale at Artifact Puzzles; I’d been looking at it for a while, but the sale gave me the extra push to go ahead and get it. I loved the look of it, and was excited to be able to purchase it at half price. 🙂

There weren’t many whimsy pieces, but most of the pieces had connectors shaped like bones, so most of them were “whimsy-like”. I started with the skull, obviously, and it wasn’t too difficult. The rest of the puzzle was another story, and it sat on my puzzle board for several weeks before my son and I finally finished it.

I love the faces inside the eye sockets, they’re creepy and cute at the same time and in my opinion they make the whole image as wonderful as it is. The pictures on the website make it seem less difficult than it was, it showed a much lighter background that didn’t look as hard as it actually was. There’s a border of smoky filigree that you can’t really see on the puzzle because the chocolate background is so dark.

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Once the skull was complete I was absolutely intimidated by the remainder of the pieces. They were all so dark and the connectors all looked so similar. It was a bit overwhelming for me, so I needed to give myself some time and distance. I put the board in my puzzle room; some days I would walk by and stop to put in a piece or two, sometimes a few weeks would go by before I even tried to put in any pieces.

When my son and I spent a few days together working on puzzles, he wanted to get this one finished. So we finished it together one day while watching M*A*S*H. It was so nice to spend time with him assembling it, and with someone else to help out and talk to it made it less overwhelming. We were both so proud when we finished!

We flipped it over once the pictures were taken, and my favorite part was this skull and crossbones with a top hat – so cute!

This puzzle was wonderful, scary, difficult, and ultimately a lot of fun. I’m so glad I finally purchased it, but I don’t think I’ll be assembling it again. It was such a challenge that I haven’t disassembled it yet, and am having my husband make me a special frame with plexiglass on both sides so that you can see the front and the back. I would never glue a wooden jigsaw puzzle, but hubby will make me a fantastic frame that will make it so it doesn’t need gluing.

I loved it – overwhelming challenge and all. ☠