Humility

On May 6, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles12 Comments

IMG_E4514 — Humility by Richard Welker – Ceaco – 550 pieces

So I have to eat my words, this puzzle is from Ceaco and not only was it really good quality, the image is amazing and was fantastic to assemble.

Ceaco isn’t a favorite brand, but they do have an interesting and varied catalog and very reasonable prices. We usually only buy them from the thrift stores and only when it’s an image that really strikes us. I actually bought this one new! Can you believe it? I loved the image so much and was on the hunt for puzzles with smaller piece counts so I decided to give it a try. The quality was quite good and we loved putting it together. So here I am, chomping on my puzzle snobby words. 🍴

The pieces were thicker than many other Ceaco puzzles I’ve assembled, and the fit was excellent. You can barely see the piece shapes in the image above, and that’s only because of the light color in the bottom corner. When it was photographed and ready to be disassembled we were able to lift the entire puzzle and nothing came apart!

The image is amazing and I’ve already found and purchased another one by the same artist; I’m ready to assemble it with mom when she gets home. Get your little old lady butt home soon momma, we’ve got puzzles to do!

Snow Leopard

On March 8, 2018March 8, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles1 Comment

Here’s the last of the kid’s puzzles from the big assembly day I had a while ago. It’s an interesting picture, isn’t it?

This wasn’t an overly easy 100 piece puzzle, but I think that’s a good thing. Kid’s puzzles should have a little challenge to them; in my opinion if they’re too easy they become boring. Snow Leopard definitely wasn’t boring. In fact, I thought I was assembling a tiger the whole time! The title of the image was nowhere to be found on the box and I had to go searching around online to find the name. It can’t be that difficult to find a small amount of space on the box to give credit to the artist and the name of the work, can it?

This is a Ceaco puzzle, so the pieces were on the thin side. The box was my least favorite type, with a pull tap to open the top edge and tabs that fit into each other to re-close it (like a cereal box). That’s a great design for making sure pieces end up missing, thank goodness all the pieces were accounted for!

The pieces fit together well, and I think the image reproduction was very good. Normally I don’t care for Ceaco, but we do tend to buy their “special” puzzles at the thrift stores because they are usually a little better quality. This is a “Glow Zone” puzzle, and we thought it was a tiger, which is the reason for the purchase. My oldest son LOVES tigers. It was a relatively quick assembly, and I got a great glow picture too!

Simple Pleasures

On February 21, 2018October 25, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles3 Comments

Another very interesting puzzle from the thrift store. The box opens like a book, and inside are two compartments with one puzzle in each from the same artist – with cork backing! This one was really fun, and the other I’m saving for Christmas in July on the blog. 🎄

Ceaco puzzles aren’t great quality in my opinion, but it seems they put a little more effort into their unusual puzzles. The “different” puzzles I’ve worked have been much better quality than their regular ones. This one was very good quality, the pieces are thick (with a cork backing they have to be a little thicker) and fit together very well.

This image was more complex than my previous few puzzles; I was trying to get myself back into the puzzle groove and was working easier images and piece counts. It took me a little longer than normal for a 500 piece puzzle, but I got it done! It’s a cute image that would look good framed in a country kitchen; there’s a rudimentary recipe for apple pie along the edge. 🍎

I’m not a big fan of Christmas puzzles, but I’ll be assembling the second 500 piece puzzle in this box later on this year. I’m looking forward to it! If you can find any of these box sets of cork-backed puzzles I definitely recommend giving them a try.

Arctic Kiss

On January 6, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This was a cute kids puzzle that I only assembled because I wanted to see how it glows. Unfortunately there wasn’t much as far as glow was concerned, so I wasn’t able to get a good “glow picture”. Oh well, it’s still a cute image.

The puzzle wasn’t the greatest quality, it’s a Ceaco puzzle, but we had hopes that because it was a specialty (Glow Zone) that it might be a little better quality. We’ve worked several special Ceaco puzzles with really nice quality – some with cork backing, one with velvet backing, and some with long strips of pieces instead of the average piece. The odd ones seem to have much better quality than the average Ceaco puzzles – at least that’s been our experience so far.

This puzzle, even though it was a glow zone puzzle, was about average Ceaco quality. The pieces are thinner, and although they fit together well the finished puzzle doesn’t lie completely flat. You can see in the picture above that some of the pieces stick up a bit. Still, the image is nice, and even though it’s not a premium quality puzzle, it was still entertaining to assemble.

I used to say I didn’t want to do any puzzles under 1000 pieces, and was pretty snobby about the brands of puzzles I would buy. I don’t buy new puzzles from companies whose quality isn’t up to my standards, but used puzzles are a whole different story. Now, as long as I can assemble the puzzle and enjoy myself doing it – that’s what counts. Who cares if the quality isn’t perfect? If we can buy 20 puzzles for the price of 1 at the thrift store, and we can enjoy ourselves assembling them, isn’t that what’s really important? I think so.

Butterflies

On August 27, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Another funky and interesting find from the thrift store. This puzzle has only 16 pieces – they are perfectly square, 3D, and magnetic.

The puzzle comes in a small square metal tin; you can solve the puzzle in it and store the pieces in there too! That would be great to keep in the car to occupy little hands, as long as they’re old enough not to put things in their mouths.

Ceaco makes some of the most interesting puzzles. We’ve found many different types of puzzles from them, too bad their regular cardboard puzzles aren’t a little more sturdy. Oh well, bring on the interesting – I love all the oddball puzzles we’ve found!