Bambi

On August 6, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles3 Comments

This is a vintage puzzle I believe; the age is showing on the image. You can’t really tell in the picture, but close up you can see some aging discoloration. Still, it’s cute and it’s the Bambi I remember. So many of the Disney images are altered these days, they don’t look the same as they did in their movies. Perhaps it’s because I’m older now that this bothers me; I think they should stay true to the original character. I don’t need the princesses to look prettier or the characters to be cuter, they should be as they were!

Sorry, that was my rant for the day. 🙂

This was another puzzle from our marathon day, I think it was the last of the small puzzles we did. I didn’t know Golden made puzzles; I knew they made books but not jigsaw puzzles! The pieces were thick and fit together very well, and aside from the discoloration this puzzle was very nice quality. It was a little bit of a challenge actually, or that could be because it was the last puzzle of the day. Who can tell? Can’t wait to see if we can find more puzzles from Golden, this one was very nice!

I loved this movie when I was little, Thumper was my favorite because he was kind of sassy like me and always laughing and joking. When I was young if you wanted to watch a movie you had to go to the theater, there was no way to watch movies at home. So mom would buy 8 tracks or cassette tapes that were sort of a read along shortened story of the movie with the actual character’s voices from the movie and the songs too! That way we could “see” the movie over and over and sing the songs at home. We had them for many of the Disney movies; we would listen to these in the car when we took road trips, or even just on the way to the grocery store. What I wouldn’t give to have those now! 🙂

Winnie the Pooh

On July 14, 2017July 14, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

A puzzle from Bogota, Columbia. 😮 I’m telling you, you never know what interesting things you can find at thrift stores! My mom is a black belt thrift store explorer! 🛒

This is the first foam puzzle for kids that I’ve seen, and it’s quite large at 16.5 x 27 inches (68 x 42 cm). The pieces feel soft in your hands and they can also be cleaned easily, which is nice for a puzzle made for young children. There is no age range shown on the box, but this is a nice puzzle for younger children – non toxic, easy to handle, and large pieces.

The puzzle of Pooh Bear himself is adorable, and the little additional items around him are fun as well, most of them are only 2 pieces. Excellent thrift store find, and I can’t wait to give it to my grandson, he’s going to love this one!

Winnie the Pooh was one of my favorites as a child, we had a soundtrack to Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree that mom used to play for us in the car. The voice of Sterling Holloway as Pooh, all the silly songs, the “wise” owl and poor nervous Piglet – I loved it! Pooh’s sweet, naive face and the jars of “hunny” in this puzzle make me smile. Silly old bear. Ah, nostalgia!

Final Assembly Day!

On June 18, 2017April 21, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, World's Largest Puzzle Progress27 Comments

The World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle is finally put together! It was amazing to see the entire puzzle assembled, all 10 sections completed and connected. WOW! You can know the measurements in your head, but then seeing it in person is another thing altogether. It’s a beautiful puzzle, and it fit together perfectly; it was stunning in it’s enormity – I can hardly believe I did all that!

This is myself, mom, and my 3 children. Not the best picture, but at least it gives you scale, that’s one enormous puzzle! When you look back at the pictures I took along the way, the every day updates, each section looks like your average size puzzle, nothing too extraordinary. This picture gives you a much better appreciation for just how large each section actually is!

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So everyone there who was taking pictures was supposed to send them to me too, so I could pick the best ones for the blog. Of course no one has so far, so unfortunately the pictures I have aren’t the best ones from the day. The one above is a good one taken by a friend of my parents (although I’m unclear why my oldest son is crouched like a frog – he’s just got to be himself I guess!)

My husband arranged for a professional photographer to come and take pics of the puzzle, so I’m hoping when I get those they’ll be awesome pictures to share. 😎 We left the puzzle at the church Saturday night, and are going back to get more pictures today and to package it back up into it’s 10 sections. Hopefully in a day or so everyone will have forwarded me all the pictures and I can pick the best ones to show.

I was so nervous and anxious all morning! I can’t explain exactly why, but I was worried that a section would fall apart or something would go wrong. (I’m a worrier – an almost Olympic level, award winning worrier) But everything went smoothly thank goodness! It’s hard to believe that this puzzle took up 6 months of my life! 😮

I have to say I’m pretty darn proud of myself! This is quite the accomplishment, and not a lot of people can say they’ve actually assembled the world’s largest commercially available jigsaw puzzle! I can – I did it!!

Again, tons of thanks to my dad and husband for doing all the heavy lifting and carting things around for the big day. And to mom for helping me make cookies and refreshments for everyone who came out to see the puzzle; to my 3 wonderful kids for showing up for mom’s weird puzzle day and being good sports about it. Thanks also to everyone who showed up to share my accomplishment today, it meant so much to me!

I’m hoping to have more pictures of the completed puzzle in the next few days to share with everyone, but at the very least I wanted to get a few of them in today’s post – because I promised I would.

I’m wiped out! Exhaustion has set in, I overdid it getting all of this set up and accomplished and will definitely be paying for it for the next few days – but it was worth it! This is not something that happens every day, so I wanted to enjoy it, and I did. I completed the Guinness World Record Largest Jigsaw Puzzle! I’m proud of myself, grateful to all my family and friends for their help, support, and encouragement; and thankful that I have this blog where I can share my puzzles with you.

I may be posting lots more pictures of the puzzle in the next few days, bear with me. I’m a proud momma who wants to show off her adorable overly large baby to everyone! 😉

Snow White

On June 17, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

The colors on this puzzle are gorgeous! The image reproduction is crisp and clean and the colors are bright and beautiful. I saved this one for last because Snow White was the first section of Memorable Disney Moments that I did, so it seemed fitting for the last day of Disney week on the blog.

The pieces for the 300 piece puzzles in this box were actually bigger than the ones for the 150 piece puzzles. Odd, it’s usually the other way around, the more pieces the smaller they are. This puzzle measures approximately 11 x 16, still a bit small for a 300 piece puzzle but a good size.

The pieces fit together a little more snugly for this puzzle than the previous ones from this box, which was nice. It makes for a better tactile experience, at least I think so anyway. It didn’t take long to assemble either, and I was very impressed with the image reproduction, it was just beautiful! This was the best puzzle in the box, in my opinion, with the best quality of them all. It’s interesting that they were all from the same manufacturer but had such variation in quality, especially between the sizes.

Today is the day we complete the final assembly of the world’s largest puzzle! It’s going to be a long exhausting day for me, so I will post pictures and info about it tomorrow. Wish me luck – it’s so exciting! 😎

Cars

On June 16, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This was the last of three 150 piece puzzles in the box, and by pure coincidence the new Cars movie is being released today! Perfect time for this puzzle, don’t you think?

Thankfully all the pieces were accounted for in this puzzle, and it was another quick and easy assembly. Lightning McQueen was easy to pull pieces for, and after he was finished the rest of the puzzle kind of falls into place. Pull the trees and sky, then Mater and Fillmore, and finally Guido and any filler or background pieces left over. Quick and fun, and not too bad quality-wise.

The pieces are thin, but there was no image lift on this puzzle, the pieces fit together well, the image reproduction was very nice, and it’s not so difficult that it would be frustrating for a child. The pieces are small for a child’s puzzle, so I wouldn’t recommend it for very young children, perhaps 6 years or older; the recommendation on the box say ages 6-99.

Disney – Pixar movies were the ones released when my children were young, and hopefully they have good memories of watching them with their parents. As soon as the movies were released on VHS (yes, I’m that old), we all piled in the car and went to the store to buy a copy. We watched them together as a family, and I have wonderful memories of spending time with the kids – laughing at the jokes and getting emotional at the sad parts – but enjoying just being with them and watching them discover the wonder of Disney movies. Perhaps they will one day share these movies with their own children and create new and wonderful memories too. ❤🎞