Tag: Cardinal

Office Space

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles8 Comments

Office Space – Cardinal – 500 pieces

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. 😁

Shimmer and Shine

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Shimmer and Shine – Cardinal – 24 pieces

*Here’s another completed puzzle from 2024, although there wasn’t much in the draft for this one, so this is going to be a pretty bare bones kinda post. In fact, what I wrote was – “meh, warped pieces”. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this puzzle wasn’t overly impressive. LOL*

Even though I’ve put together some extremely large and difficult jigsaw puzzles, I still enjoy puzzles of all sizes – even those made for children. This one however didn’t seem too impressive back when it was assembled. “Meh” isn’t a word that I use regularly, so this one must have been pretty run of the mill and not particularly well made.

Sorry Cardinal, I calls ’em like I sees ’em. 😎

Kitt-TNT

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles8 Comments

Kitt-TNT – Cardinal – 300 pieces

When I saw this at the thrift store I thought this image was funny and looked like it might be fun to assemble. I was right. It went together really quickly, but I enjoyed it very much.

The quality of this puzzle was good/fair. The pieces were on the thin side and sometimes the fit was a bit wonky, but it’s a pre-loved puzzle so I can’t say for certain how it was newly purchased. The finish was shiny, which made the darker areas more challenging; but overall the quality was good.

Have you heard of Exploding Kittens? I hadn’t. Apparently it’s a card game, I’d never heard of it before. This puzzle comes with a bonus card to augment your deck, shown below…

I looked it up, and the website says it’s a “kitty powered version of Russian Roulette”. Whatever that means. The box they showed says this is “A card game for people who are into kittens and explosions and laser beams and sometimes goats.” It sounds funny, but I’m not sure it’s for me.

I’m an old fuddy-duddy, and prefer card games like euchre, gin, sevens, canasta, pinochle, etc. But, hey, to each their own, right?

Whether or not I’d enjoy playing the card game doesn’t matter at all, what matters was whether or not I enjoyed this puzzle; and I absolutely did. 💣🐱💣

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Cardinal – 48 pieces

My youngest son decided it was time for me to put together one of my kids puzzles that have been hanging out at the bottom of my puzzle shelves way in the back – and of course he chose TMNT. He tells me this is from the 2012 version of the show, in case anyone was wondering. 🐢

*In case you were wondering if I was wondering – I wasn’t. But he loves to talk about the things he’s interested in, and I’m his mother, so I listen.*

In addition to providing all the information I learned about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he even helped out with the assembly right from the beginning! I’m sure the fact that it was only 48 pieces was a consideration, but he was genuinely excited about this puzzle and I was happy to have his assistance.

I was quite impressed with the quality of this puzzle, it came in a 6 pack of kids puzzles of varying piece counts (all from Nickelodeon shows) that I paid $1.49 for. I was expecting much lesser quality, but was happily surprised that the pieces were thick and fit together well, and the image reproduction was very good.

It was a bargain at even twice the price. Cowabunga dudes!

Crazy Cuisine Cart*

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles12 Comments

Crazy Cuisine Cart* by Iralu – Cardinal – 150 pieces

So disappointing. Not only was the quality pretty bottom of the barrel, but this little guy was missing seven pieces! It absolutely wasn’t my fault, I opened the bag directly onto the table and there’s no way that many pieces got up and walked away. Oh well, as one of the Puzzle Posse told me; If I put all the pieces available together I have completed the puzzle – even if it wasn’t complete.

This was one of the puzzles from the Cardinal multipack that I knew wouldn’t be great quality, but wanted to assemble the images because they are so different and interesting. Still love the artwork!