Review: Cow Parade

On October 13, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Puzzle reviewsLeave a comment

This post is sponsored by Puzzle Warehouse.

Cow Parade was a wonderfully entertaining puzzle that made me happy with each piece that I put into it. The collage aspect made it so much fun for me, and the interesting artwork on the cows was beautiful (and sometimes very funny).

Cobble Hill Puzzles are very well made, and I find their quality to be very good. The pieces are a good thickness, with an excellent variety of shapes that fit together well. The image reproduction is excellent, with bright, beautiful colors and crisp lines. The finish is linen-covered, which has a great feel in your hands. Even their boxes are covered with linen and have a luxurious feel to them. Click the link above to see at the Cobble Hill Puzzles currently available at Puzzle Warehouse, they have an excellent catalog of puzzles to choose from. (check out Red from their rainbow collection of collages in 7 different colors – I want them all!)

The fit can sometimes be loose, making it difficult to move smaller sections around, but I don’t find it to be too much so. The piece shapes can be very prominent in the finished image, which is not optimal if you wish to display it; but I find that it doesn’t make the assembly any less fun. Most times, applying glue to a puzzle can lessen the appearance of the piece shapes.

This puzzle is a collection of some of the cows designed and decorated by artists all over the globe for CowParade, the world’s largest and most successful public art event. Over $20 million dollars has been raised by charitable organizations all over the world by the auctioning of the cows. Wow!

It was such great fun, I enjoyed learning about the charity/art installation, and I loved assembling every single cow. They all were beautiful in their own way, but these are my favorites…

Jacques Moosteau, he made me laugh out loud! The writing is so small that it’s difficult to see the information for each of the cows; the title, artist, and city of display was listed near each one.

This gorgeous head of hair is worn by Woodstock, he’s got quite the outfit on, and I love the rose colored glasses!

This interesting beauty is Homage to Picowso’s African Period, perfection!

This one was so much fun to assemble, the bike made it larger and a bit more challenging than his other friends. He is Lait Triporteur, which I found means basically Milk Scooter (a triporteur is the name for the 3-wheeled cargo bike shown). I learned a new word in addition to having a great time!

I specifically chose this puzzle to review, because I’d had my eye on it for a while; it was on my wish list at Puzzle Warehouse for quite some time – it just looked like so much fun. I was hoping that it would be, and I was absolutely right! I love to find puzzles like this for review, ones I think will be entertaining and well made that give me the chance to let others know about them.

Cow Parade was a great quality puzzle that was extremely entertaining to assemble. I found it to be about medium difficulty, there aren’t as many plain white pieces as you’d think. I absolutely loved it – and it’s highly recommended. Moo! 🐄

Details:

Title: Cow Parade
Artist: Cow Parade Holdings
Brand: Cobble Hill
Piece count: 1000 pieces
Size: Approx. 27 x 19 in. (68 x 49 cm)
Purchased: N/A, sent for review

Quality:

Board: Very good
Cutting: Very good
Image: Excellent
Box: Good, sturdy
Fit: Good, slightly loose
Puzzle Dust: Moderate amount
Piece cut: Random cut
Piece shapes: Very good variety
Finish: Matte finish, lays flat

Overall Rating: Very good, highly recommended

I received this product at no cost in order to facilitate this review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are truthful and 100% my own.

My Jigsaw Journal’s 2nd Birthday!

On October 1, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling6 Comments

Happy 2nd Birthday to My Jigsaw Journal! 🎂 It’s a couple of days late, but my aging old lady brain just isn’t what it used to be. I am still assembling jigsaw puzzles to try to keep it sharp though; here’s hoping they work their magic and keep it from deteriorating any more!

I’m shocked that it’s been 2 years already, but it’s been a great 2 years. Puzzling and blogging has been fun and rewarding, even more so than I thought it would be. It’s amazing when I go back over the stats – to me the numbers seem incredible!

766 posts (including this one)
569 puzzles assembled – holy guacamole!
324,544 pieces assembled (I did notice that while I assembled around 50 more puzzles than the previous year, there were about 70,000 less pieces. I’m not sure how much of that has to do with the 40,320 piece puzzle I assembled the first year; even so, if you take that one out of the mix it’s still 50 more puzzles and 30,000 less pieces. I guess that happens when you’ve got anxiety problems and 1000 piece puzzles are too much for you some days 😐 )
41,842 views (that’s a BIG jump from only around 8,000 in the first year)
8,674 visitors to the blog from 99 countries! (more than 7,000 new visitors in this past year – oh my!)

Those are all pretty awesome numbers for this tiny little blog I started just to keep friends and family up to date on my progress of the world’s largest (at the time) jigsaw puzzle. Once Memorable Disney Moments was finished I thought that would be it for the blog; but I discovered that talking about puzzles was, for me, almost as fun as puzzling itself! Some days I don’t have a lot to say, and some days the words just come pouring out – but almost every day there’s a new puzzle to post and plenty to say about it. 🙂

Going back over all the posts and puzzles has me reminiscing and I went back and found some interesting facts about the puzzles I’ve done. In the first year of the blog I hadn’t assembled any wooden jigsaw puzzles, but in the second year I’ve put together 52 wooden puzzles from 5 different companies! 29 of those were micro puzzles, but still, 52 is a LOT!

I’ve also assembled 5 (almost 6) 3D puzzles – I’m in the process of assembling a very large 3D puzzle for a review for a new company. It’s complicated and I’m doing my best, but it’s taking me much longer than I’d anticipated; I’m enjoying the challenge of using my brain differently and trying something completely different. 🙂

There have been reviews and posts for puzzles from 100 different puzzle companies on the blog – did you know there were that many out there? I’m shocked by the number, but I went back through all my posts and made an actual list. There are many more companies out there in this big, wide world that I haven’t tried; but the fact that I’ve done puzzles made by so many different brands/companies astounds me!

I also want to send out a special thank you to the companies that have given me the opportunity to assemble and review puzzles for them, I’m extremely grateful and I’ve loved reviewing puzzles even though I may not have always loved the puzzles themselves. 😉 Many thanks to the following companies (click the links to check out their very cool puzzles!)

I’ve had a wonderful time these past 2 years puzzling and blogging, and I’m looking forward to another year of jigsaw puzzles (along with my fantastic puzzle posse of my mom, son, daughter, and hubby – I love you guys! 💖) Thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to read this blog and especially for those puzzlers/readers out there who send encouragement, well wishes, comments, and suggestions – I appreciate every single one of you!

Here’s to another year of happy puzzling! 😎

Sewing Notions

On September 23, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This is such a fantastic picture that you can see my tv remote and the partial legs of my hubby. Sorry. It was a lot of fun though, even though it was more difficult than I thought it would be. Here’s what the image actually looks like…

51801COB

It was great quality – Cobble Hill puzzles usually are, and the fit was excellent. I find that most of their puzzles have an obvious piece shape in the finished image. You can’t really tell it from the angle of my picture, but the piece shapes are quite obvious in this puzzle. For me, it doesn’t detract from the assembly, it’s no less enjoyable; but if you want to frame and hang a puzzle it does take away from the look of the completed image.

Hubby and I enjoyed this puzzle much more than we thought we would, I think he likes coming to my rescue with a difficult puzzle – especially near the end. That’s his M.O., he loves to be my hero and help solve problems and make life easier for me. I love him dearly for it 💖; he’s a sweetheart, even though he would DEFINITELY not describe himself that way.

Do you ever work on puzzles with your sweetheart or a friend? Or do you prefer to be by yourself and put in every single piece?

Review: More Ice Cream Please

On August 22, 2018August 22, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Puzzle reviews, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

More Ice Cream Please – Cobble Hill – 500 pieces

This was quite fun, but very challenging. It’s got a few missing pieces, but them’s the chances you take when you purchase used. It didn’t detract much from my enjoyment of the assembly, and the puzzle was such good quality that I didn’t mind that much. Fun puzzle!

For being a used thrift store puzzle, the quality held up quite well. The pieces still had a great feel and fit together very well. Sometimes you buy a pre-loved puzzle and it’s been beat up by it’s previous owner; this one seems to have been taken care of (if you don’t count the missing pieces). I do love a Cobble Hill puzzle, especially the smaller piece counts – the quality is excellent!

Once the edge was assembled it seemed that there may be a few missing pieces, but you can never be sure with a random cut – sometimes the edges don’t look like edges. Blue ice cream was the first to be assembled, and when those were finished I knew for sure that there were some pieces that seem to have melted away 😉

Mom came over and helped me finish this one up, with her help the pieces seem to fly into place! For me it’s so nice working a puzzle with someone else; there’s the fun of working together on a common goal, good conversation, and just spending time together. In the words of one of my favorite puzzle companies – Sit long. Talk much. Turn off that screen.

It’s more challenging than it looks, but absolutely worth it! Definitely recommended, two sundaes way up! 🍨🍨

Details:

Title: More Ice Cream Please
Artist: Not credited
Brand: Cobble Hill
Piece count: 500 pieces
Size: Approx. 18 x 24 in. (46 x 61 cm)
Purchased: Used, thrift store

Quality:

Board: Very good
Cutting: Very good
Image: Very good
Box: Very good
Fit: Very good
Puzzle Dust: Small amount
Piece cut: Random cut
Piece shapes: Very good variety
Finish: Slightly shiny finish, lays flat

Overall Rating: Very good, recommended

Taking Pumpkins to Market

On August 21, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles6 Comments

So I found a total of 20 puzzles that I’d previously assembled and posted pictures of on my completed puzzles pages, but had never written an entire post for. The only conclusion I can come up with is that the pictures are so unbelievably horrid that I was loathe to unleash them on the unsuspecting readers. Well, times being tough and all, I need puzzles to post and so here we are. With the “found” puzzle pictures I have now given myself a 3 week cushion in which to get off my lazy butt and get some serious puzzling done. The pictures are terrible, but a girl gots to do what a girl gots to do! 😇

Another stellar photograph – this time with my husband’s shoes showing up in the background. Yeesh.

Still, this is an exciting puzzle – it was my very first Cobble Hill! I remember being so excited about this puzzle, not only did the pieces look and feel amazing – the box did too! The linen paper they use on both the puzzle and the box gives a great feel in your hand. They do such a good job with quality, especially on their smaller piece count puzzles.

What fascinates me about this puzzle is that it seems quite bright and colorful, but I distinctly remember that all the pieces seemed rather dark with varying shades of brown/black/dark. It was much more of a challenge than it looks, but it was still entertaining and excellent quality.