Gibsons Book Club – My Jigsaw Journal

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Anna Stead – Gibsons – 1000 pieces

This was shipped to my home as an early birthday present, and knowing it was puzzles OF COURSE I didn’t wait until my birthday to open them. Duh. Thanks for the thoughtful gift Penny, I’m having a great time with this one!

The scrolls with the words were much more of a challenge than I thought; even though putting the quotes together was no problem at all, the rest of the scroll with no words and plenty of color changes were more difficult than I gave them credit for. At one point I’d assembled the words and pulled out what I thought to be most of the pieces with scroll on them – and it was just too difficult for me to place many pieces at all. I kinda gave up on that after a while and focused on filling in other sections first. After a bit I began to find a few pieces here and there and eventually sorted the scroll pieces by shape and only tried to place them when I could be sure of the shape or coloring I was looking for.

Sometimes I get it into my head how something should go together and I stick to it even though it takes way more time than it should and is obviously, eventually, the wrong way to go. That’s how I started out this puzzle, and even though I knew I was doing it and it was taking a ridiculous amount of time – I still continued to do it! Sometimes I’m a stubborn ol’ cow, and I just have to blunder through everything my enormously stupid way until I come to my senses.

I’m down to two trays of pieces left, which means I’m now sorting my next puzzle before I can finish this one. My next one will be section B of the big Disney puzzle, Alice in Wonderland. If things keep going the way they are it’s gonna take a while to sort; I’ve been sorting since yesterday but keep getting exhausted and start yawning and end up needing a nap.💤🛌💤

Then again, I’m so anxious to hurry up and get back to this gorgeous puzzle that maybe the sorting won’t take as long as I thought. Here’s hoping!

Whatever puzzle you’re working on today, happy puzzling my friends! 🧩💚

Sherlock Holmes – Gibsons (Book Club Series) – 1000 pieces

Well, you won’t be surprised to hear that one day my impetuousness took over and on a whim I decided that puzzle shopping was the order of the day. Of course thrift store puzzles wasn’t what was wanted, it needed to be new ones. I needed to see and feel the boxes, turn them over and read them, and see whole shelves full of bright, shiny, new puzzles to decide which ones were coming home with me.

This Sherlock Holmes puzzle found it’s way into my hands and of course there was no letting it go. It’s a collage, but an interesting one and I absolutely love the look of it. Apparently Gibsons has a series of puzzles based on literature and treasured stories, and they all look like so much fun to do! They only had this puzzle at the store, but my online detective work has uncovered others in the series and they all look amazing to my eye; I’ve found Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Gothic Novels, and a very cute image of book covers. If I hadn’t already spent way too much of my puzzle budget this week they would all be on their way to my home right now.

My blog tells me the last time I assembled a Gibsons puzzle was in 2018, so it’s been a while; but that was a children’s puzzle of only 150 pieces, the last time I assembled an adult Gibsons was in April of 2017! They aren’t a brand I normally buy, but the two puzzles I just referenced were apparently quite good quality, so I’m not sure when or why I stopped buying them. Perhaps it’s just because they’re a puzzle company in the UK and I don’t normally buy cardboard puzzles from there. Honestly, I’m just not sure.

Words were the first thing I assembled after the border, and this little map was part of that. There’s something about the look of it that makes me smile.

I just love the look of this crest, that’s my only reason for showing it to you. Did you know Great Scotland Yard is the name of a street in Westminster, London? I certainly didn’t. There is also a Great Scotland Yard Hotel, which is what this crest is apparently a symbol for.

These little sections are what most people think of when they hear Sherlock Holmes; a deerstalker cap and the quote “Elementary my dear Watson”. Having never read the books or short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, my only references are television shows and movies. If you said Sherlock Holmes to me it would conjure up images of Jonny Lee Miller as the detective and Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson. 📺🔎

I had a great time with this puzzle. It was good quality and had an excellent image for puzzling – which are basically the things that are most important to me. If you think this might be a puzzle you’d like I highly recommend it.