The Pet Parlour by Geoff Tristam – Ravensburger (What If #6) – 1000 pieces
Pamela runs The Pampered Pooch Parlour, but she dreams of diversifying and branching out to bigger and better things. What If her dream became reality, would things go wild? What would her shop look like then? This is what you have to puzzle in Ravensburger’s What If #6 The Pet Parlour.
If you read this blog regularly you know I love Ravensburger puzzles and that their quality is excellent. This puzzle is no different. It’s nice after working other puzzles to start a puzzle you know is going to be good and whose quality you don’t have to worry about – it’s like coming home. It makes me happy. And yes, I know, I need to get out more. 😐
This puzzle looked like fun to me, and it was even more fun than I thought it would be! I really enjoyed it very much, and of all the What If puzzles I’ve done so far (1-6) I would say this one is definitely my favorite! The concept is funny, the artwork is exceptional and it makes for a wonderful puzzle. If you’re not sure about the What If concept and you want to try it out, start with #6 – it’s tons of fun. 🙂
Meet The Imaginaries by Philip Straub – Endless Games – 1000 pieces
I absolutely love this artwork! Mom found this one at the thrift store, and I couldn’t wait to get started on it. I love the artwork by Philip Straub, it grabbed me as soon as I saw it. A new company too, so I was extra excited to get started!
I wish I had good news to report about the quality, but I was underwhelmed by it. I was hoping for at least a fair quality puzzle because there are a couple other puzzles by the same artist that I would love to do. But unfortunately – not so much. There was quite a bit of image lift on the pieces, and also the image was actually scraping off in places. The pieces were thick enough, but they way they fit together was odd. The best way I can describe it was “spongy”. It was not always obvious when you got a piece connected wrong, and how they fit together was kind of soft and spongy. Sometimes it felt like the piece was where it was supposed to be when it wasn’t in the right place.
You can see that the bottom half of the puzzle is quite dark, and boy oh boy did it get difficult once the brighter parts were done! I actually had a great time assembling the top part of the puzzle in spite of the quality; but once all the brighter bits were finished the dark stuff took a while and I really had to concentrate. I still enjoyed the puzzle overall but the quality left a lot to be desired.
The title of this puzzle is Meet The Imaginaries, can you see them hiding in there? There are quite a few of them, and they look pretty shy – poor things! Interesting note, the name of the puzzle was nowhere on the box! The back of the box had a picture and small blurb about the artist, but nowhere did it tell me the name of the puzzle I was doing. It told me the name of the series of puzzles he’d done, but not the puzzle inside that box. I had to look it up online.
I enjoyed this puzzle, but wish the quality had been better. Still, I can’t really complain about a thrift store puzzle – what a blessing it is to be able to buy most of our puzzles that way! I really do appreciate everyone who donates puzzles, and most of the ones we buy we donate back once we’ve done them. Every now and then we find an amazing puzzle that was fun to do and we keep those. 🙂
Noah’s Ark by Eric Dowdle – TDC Games (Jigsaw Puzzles for Dummies) – 1000 pieces
It was purely coincidence that right after I finished Noah’s Ark by Jean-Jacques Loup that mom found this Noah’s Ark by Eric Dowdle at the thrift store. Maybe someone is trying to tell me something – I hope it means rain is coming because we’re having a bit of a drought down here!
Interesting concept for this puzzle, the box looks like the “For Dummies” books and each pieces is alphanumerically numbered on the back. There is also a small instruction booklet that comes in the box to explain the steps of how to assemble a jigsaw puzzle, along with a map on the back to show you where each piece should go.
There are plenty of ways for those people who haven’t done jigsaw puzzles before to get the instruction and help they need to complete a 1000 piece puzzle. Or, if you are already a puzzler you can disregard the map and the numbers and just assemble it as you would any other puzzle – the choice is yours! Like it says on the box “you decide the level of difficulty”.
The quality of this puzzle was very good. The pieces were thick and sturdy and fit together well; the image reproduction was very nice and there was no image lift on any of the pieces. Very good all around quality!
Eric Dowdle’s artwork is compelling to me. There’s something about the symmetry of his pieces and the clean lines – I can’t put my finger on exactly why I like it so much but I like it very much. 😍 It does make for a more difficult puzzle sometimes but there’s fun in the extra challenge. At least I think so. There’s a bit of humor in this puzzle too, you’ll find a pair of unicorns boycotting the ark with placards that say “heck no we won’t go”, a traffic cop for the large animals, and even a polar bear with sunglasses and a beverage!
I did attempt to assemble the puzzle the “dummies” way, first by only using the numbers to do all of a few rows, and then by using the numbers to pull all the pieces for one row but then flipping the pieces over and putting the row together without the numbers. For me it takes the sense of accomplishment away – I just read letters and numbers and put them in order. There’s no fun in that for me, but I wanted to try it that way to get a sense of the brand. If it helps you and you learn to do jigsaws that way I’m all for it; assemble it whichever way makes you happy!
If you find a for dummies puzzle that you like, don’t be put off by the dummies part; the quality is very good – I say go for it. 🙂
Slumber Party! (Wasgij Imagine #3) by Neil Easton – Jumbo – 1000 pieces
Why can’t grandpa get some rest? What in the world is going on while everyone else is asleep? You’ll be surprised when you puzzle the answer. 🙂
Another awesome Wasgij by Jumbo, with excellent artwork by Neil Easton. The box shows a crazy evening at home with everyone getting ready for bed, crying children, barking dog, etc. You must imagine what the scene looks like a couple of hours from then – what is going on and what has woken grandpa? I thought I had it figured out pretty quickly, but it turns out I was only half right. 😦 I usually get it early, but this one stumped me a little bit!
Jumbo quality is some of the best there is. It’s right up there with Ravensburger in my opinion; and in some areas I think Jumbo beats Ravensburger. They’re both at the top of my list, we’ll call it a tie.
This puzzle was quite fun, and I really enjoyed the assembly which is no surprise. Cartoon puzzle?- check, Jumbo quality? – check, Mystery picture? – check, Awesome puzzle play time? – double check!
Monday’s Child by Betsey Clark – Springbok – 500 pieces
Springbok octagonal puzzle from 1973! Cool, right? Precious Moments characters for each day of the week with the nursery rhyme Monday’s Child. It’s very cute, but also very pale and made for a moderately difficult assembly!
This puzzle was pretty difficult with the paleness of everything as well as a random cut. In addition, I believe the puzzle must have been stored for many years; there was discoloration on many of the pieces which helped in making the assembly a bit more challenging.
The image was adorably cute, and was for the most part a fun assembly. I will say that after all the words and kids finding the right piece became quite a task! Everything is so pale, there are small flowers here and there but otherwise the pieces were white/cream colored. With a random cut it’s difficult to know what shape piece you’re looking for if you don’t have color or pattern to guide you. With everything mostly white I didn’t know if I was looking for a large piece, or 2 smaller pieces. And when I thought I was looking for a small piece it would turn out to be the end of a great big piece! Random cut isn’t bad when there is something to guide you, but when the pieces are all the same color – it blows!
The Springbok quality wasn’t bad. Good piece thickness and they fit together well. I can’t speak to the image reproduction because of the discoloration and age of the puzzle. My only issue with this puzzle is that the piece shape is extremely obvious in the finished puzzle and you can’t see the artwork very well at all. Otherwise I didn’t have any problems with it.
I don’t usually take more than one picture, but I wanted to show a closeup of one of the kids, they’re so cute!
My Jigsaw Journal 