Tag: Ceaco

The Baker

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

The Baker (GiGi the Cat) by Christiana – Ceaco – 300 pieces

This cute little puzzle was fun – but it’s a Ceaco so I went into it with an attitude. A bad attitude. I know I shouldn’t, but it’s difficult to be objective when you’ve had such bad dealings with the company about their poor quality puzzles. I do my best, but I’m human.

The quality was just ok. There were a good variety of shapes and the image reproduction was nice as well. As usual the poorest part of this Ceaco puzzle was the chipboard used (the fit was loose as well with some dull cutting evident, but it wasn’t awful). The chipboard was on the thinner side, and some pieces were delaminating and splitting. In my humble opinion an upgrade to the quality of the board would make a world of difference in the overall quality of this brand.

An upgrade to their customer service wouldn’t hurt either. Just sayin’.

This is GiGi and her companion, FiFi the mouse. If I’m honest it took me a few minutes to find FiFi in the image once I read their story on the box. I hunted all over for that mouse before I found her peeking over GiGi’s shoulder. It was easy to overlook her in the patterns and colors of the image.

This is GiGi’s pet, a Scottish Terrier named CoCo. All the repetitive names made me smile, silly as it is; and it had me brainstorming as to how many more names like these that I could think of. LuLu, KiKi, BeBe, etc. There are quite a few combinations you can come up with!

The box says that GiGi loves cooking, painting, shopping, gardening and camping. I don’t think GiGi and I would have much in common; I do love cooking, but rarely feel well enough to do it much. As for the rest of it, I’m tired just reading about it! GiGi must be much younger than I am. 💤👵💤

Overall the best part of this puzzle for me was the interesting, colorful and silly image. Parts of it were just challenging enough to keep it from being a boring 300 piece puzzle that went too quickly. I enjoyed myself despite my admittedly terrible attitude about this company.

If there are more puzzles out there from this artist (perhaps from another brand) I’d be more than happy to give them a try; her aesthetic is just my pile of pieces. 🧩

Keepsakes

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles7 Comments

Keepsakes by Judy Koenig – Ceaco – 550 pieces

Eh. Not my favorite type of image, but I had hopes it would be entertaining. It was alright, that’s really all the endorsement I can give it.

The quality of the chipboard was good/fair, and for the most part so was the cutting. The variety of different piece shapes and the fit were good as well. There was a lot of image lift, but this puzzle is over 25 years old and it has been assembled more than a few times from the look of it. Overall, the quality was good/fair.

This was my favorite section – more cartoony and less painterly.

Many of the piece shapes were just a little bit off of what “regular” ones look like. In several places the hole where a prong would go was made up of the joining of two pieces; it made for a more interesting assembly.

I had higher hopes for this image, there was something about it made me want the puzzle even though it’s a Ceaco. My thought process was that because it was a thrift store purchase I wasn’t really giving the brand any of my money, and the picture looked as though it would be entertaining to assemble. It wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped, but I still got my money’s worth – it was only a couple of dollars and I worked on it for a couple of days.

Where else can you get that many hours of entertainment for such little investment?

Isis

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles14 Comments

Isis by Kinuko Y. Craft – Ceaco – 550 pieces

My youngest asked me to do this puzzle when I was choosing what was next, and like the pushover that I am that’s exactly what I did. It was alright, much darker than it looks and just about as difficult as I’d imagined. Meh. It’s ok.

Typical Ceaco quality. Nothing horrid or fantastic, on the lower end of the quality scale in my opinion.

I’ve had this puzzle for at least 4 or 5 years, and it kept getting moved around in the shuffle of puzzles; I was never in the mood for it. At least it’ll be on it’s way to the thrift store now that it’s complete.

She’s got a beautiful face and the artwork is lovely – just a little dark around the edges for my taste. Kinuko Craft’s images make for beautiful but quite difficult puzzles. I’ve still got a few here, and they’re still being shuffled around because these days I’m usually not in the mood for that much challenge (unless my baby boy asks me to be 😉).

Elf

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Elf – Ceaco – 300 pieces

Another very cute Christmas puzzle that isn’t the usual – these are my kind of holiday puzzles! This is another favorite Christmas movie in this house, and although it’s only 18 years old, we think of it as a classic. We watch it every year, and it never fails to make us laugh; I think it’ll be part of our holidays for years to come.

As I’m typing up these posts it occurs to me that almost every cardboard Christmas puzzle I have was given to me as a gift. I go right on past them in the store, because I have an admittedly bad attitude about them in general. So most of the ones I’ve assembled this year have been gifts from previous years. Luckily though, everyone who has gifted me a holiday puzzle knows how I feel and has given me ones with images that are more my style. 💝💚

After the edge was assembled I started with Buddy the Elf; then the words went together, and then all the snowflakes around the edges. The snowflakes were the most difficult part for me, but we puzzlers love figuring things out – I got it done in the end.

What I ended up with was a very funny, sweet image. Loved this puzzle. 💟

Thank you Penny! Sorry it took me two years to get to this one, but it was great fun once I finally assembled it.

A Christmas Story

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

A Christmas Story – Ceaco – 300 pieces

There hasn’t been a Ceaco puzzle on my board in quite some time. **Flashback to the terrible, awful, very bad, horrific 12 days of Christmas advent calendar of 2019😱**

Anyway, this puzzle was a Christmas gift from that same year, and it’s taken me a while to get to assembling it. But even though I still have beef with this brand, I am NEVER ever ungrateful for puzzles that I receive as gifts. It isn’t so much about the actual puzzle itself, but more that someone cared about me enough to pick out something they thought I would like and appreciate. And if the brand isn’t a favorite or the image isn’t exactly what I would have chosen for myself, it is still loved and appreciated by me. Always.

This movie is a favorite in this house; we start watching it on Christmas Eve, and have it playing in the background most of the day on Christmas. All of my children adore this movie, and it makes a momma happy when your grown kids want to watch a movie with you. Everyone’s tastes in movies are very different these days, but this movie will bring us all together for a couple of hours – what’s not to love? 💖

If you’re a regular reader here you may know how much assembling words makes me happy. You’ll be surprised to learn that the letters in this puzzle were the very last things to be put together. Each letter is quite large, and if I had pulled all the pieces it would have been close to half of the whole puzzle! So I started with the pieces that were all red, then the red pieces with a bit of the border that surrounds the images from the movie and any pieces with a face on them.

After that, I let the pieces take me wherever they went and ended up waiting until the very end to get those words put together. Once all that was left were letters it was much easier to find whichever piece I was looking for.

This puzzle was really enjoyable, it’s a great image too – and not as easy as it looks. A good time was had, and I am so grateful for the gift. (I love you Baby Princess 💕)