Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to all my readers, friends, and family – and some of you are all three of those things! I hope your day is filled with peace, joy, and lots of love. 💝
I’ve been wanting a puzzle that spelled something out for a while now, and I finally got one! 😁
This was a beautiful but difficult puzzle – much more of a challenge than I thought it would be. It’s so lovely though, worth every bit of time and money spent.
Merry Christmas! 🎄🎅🎁
This was a fantastic thrift store find, with bright colors and fun subject matter. Even better – mom came over to help finish it, and all the pieces were present and accounted for!
I put this puzzle away for quite a while, I was a bit hesitant to get going on the assembly. It was all that red! I love a collage, but all that red everywhere had me thinking it was going to be difficult to assemble. It wasn’t though, I enjoyed it very much. 🙂
The quality was excellent! The pieces had a different finish on them than the previous Falcon puzzles I’ve assembled. The finish was clean feeling and smooth; the previous ones I’d worked had an almost waxy feel to them. Interesting. Differences in finish aside, they were thick pieces with a good fit, fair variety in piece shapes, and excellent image reproduction. I enjoyed working with these pieces, and they made a beautiful puzzle.
I’m sure you remember this guy from yesterday’s post. I love his face! Every time I look at this puzzle I’m drawn to this adorable dog. I don’t know why I think of it as a male though, other than the face seems masculine to me; which means it’s probably a she. LOL
This is basically what many people think of when they think about Britain – double-decker buses, the queen’s guards, and fish & chips. I was intrigued about why there were daffodils though, because the national flower of Britain is the rose. A little research tells me that they’re associated with Lent because they bloom in the early spring and the blooms usually drop before Easter – which is why in Britain they’re known as the Lent Lily. I love it when I learn something from a puzzle!
I had a great time putting this puzzle together, it is a lovely, interesting collage that had wonderful quality. I’m looking forward to finding more fantastic puzzles in the thrift stores this holiday season!
My brain is an interesting place, and for some reason it doesn’t want me to talk about this puzzle. I have absolutely no valid reason for it, but every time I look at this picture I don’t want to type up the post. It makes NO sense.
I had a wonderful time with the assembly; it’s a beautiful collage, it had great quality, and I even got to work on it with my puzzle posse. I absolutely loved it! Why shouldn’t I want to talk about it? No clue.
These sections were the ones I most enjoyed putting together. The blue Woolworth needle book was the first one to be assembled – 79 needles for 19 cents? WOW! I’d love to know how old that needle book actually is. The family in the upper right corner was the most challenging for me, and the very last section to be completed. There was something about the colors that seemed to make it more difficult than the rest. Still, I do love a challenge! 😉
Vintage Needle Books was great fun (even if my aging, messed up brain doesn’t want to discuss it); it’s definitely recommended!
This picture just doesn’t do this puzzle justice, the colors are so bright and beautiful! You know how I love a collage, so imagine my happiness at finding such a colorful, interesting image. 😍
This was my first Hennessy puzzle, I was impressed and enjoyed it very much! The quality was very good, with thick pieces that fit together well, a random cut that kept things interesting, and lovely image reproduction. The colors really are something! In general the quality is very similar to Cobble Hill puzzles; the chipboard used, the cut of the pieces, and the fit are all very much alike.
There were some pieces not completely separated from each other, and the piece shape is quite evident in the finished image – which isn’t great if you want to display the puzzle after assembly. Having only assembled one Hennessy puzzle, I cannot say whether this is typical of this brand or is just because my puzzle was cut with a die that was becoming dull. I always try to err on the side of positivity, so until I work more puzzles from this brand I will say it was most likely a puzzle from the end of a run.
Hot Air Balloons was so entertaining to put together! It’s a bit surprising because I normally stay clear of hot air balloon puzzles. There are so many balloon puzzles, and the images for the most part seem so similar – they’re just not my thing. I’ve done a few, and they were fun to assemble; but when looking at puzzles to purchase I usually skip right over the hot air balloons. This image, however, is very different. And a collage! 💖
These are 3 of my favorites, but honestly, I loved them all! Each background was so different, each balloon was so fun – for me this is a perfect image for puzzling, and it made me very, very happy. Every time I look at it I start singing a song in my head from The 5th Dimension (from the late 1960’s) ….. 🎶Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon🎶
Hot Air Balloons is definitely recommended, I absolutely adored it!
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Overall Rating: Very good, recommended
Usually when I think of puzzles with artwork by Dominic Davison I think of lovely cottages and countrysides; this puzzle has those, but only as glimpsed through doorways. Even though it had been almost a year and a half since I’d worked a 1500 piece puzzle, the image drew me in and I was ready to work on it with no anxiety at all about the number of pieces. It’s a gorgeous image and exactly what I was looking for when I wanted a collage to assemble.
Collages are my some of my favorite puzzles; it’s like having many mini puzzles to assemble and figure out how they connect together. It reduces the amount of stress for me because I don’t have to work the puzzle as a whole, just little sections at a time. I also love the look of collages; whether they are a hodge-podge of images all smushed together or an orderly collection of similar objects, I find the overall effect to be pleasing to the eye.
This puzzle was beautiful, just the right amount of challenging, and thoroughly entertaining to assemble. The doors were relatively easy to sort, though the scenes behind them sometimes presented a challenge. I started with the easiest and brightest colors, and in the process became more familiar with each of the scenes and the slight differences in shades of colors that allowed me to determine where they belonged.
Surprisingly, there weren’t very many pieces at all that were just the brick background – once all the doors were complete it didn’t take much time to fill in the rest of the pieces. It was a completely engrossing puzzle with a beautiful end result!
These two doors were the most fun to put together; London looks amazing, and I’m not ashamed to say I have no idea what the other is. I’m fairly certain it’s a Mediterranean city, but have no clue as to which one it may be. It doesn’t matter much, I still enjoyed the assembly of it.
This door was the most difficult, and it was the last one completed; many of the pieces looked like they might fit in other sections. It’s a mysterious set of doors though, isn’t it? Who’s on the other side?
The cut of Educa puzzles is one thing about this brand that I’m not crazy about. Most of the pieces are ballerinas (2/2), and with the limited variety of shapes there are many places where the pieces seem to fit where they do not belong. This is especially frustrating in larger areas of one color and along the edges. That said, they also have their humpback/swayback shaped pieces, which are quite easy to find and match!
My other issue with this brand is the puzzle image on their boxes. Their logo, piece count, and the words “Educa Puzzle” in very large font take over the far right side of the box; this effectively obscures one entire edge of the image! Why? As an avid puzzler, I feel I can speak for many of us when I say that you could reduce the size of the image a bit, as long as there’s an unobstructed view of the image as a WHOLE we would be very grateful. (We are not grateful, however, for the tiny 1 x 1.5 inch whole image on the side of the box, it is not helpful!)
Complaining aside, I really did have a great time with this puzzle, I promise. Bad cut and covered picture aside, it was an entertaining assembly and a beautiful finished puzzle. Loved it❣
My Jigsaw Journal 