Tag: Jigsaw Puzzles

Life’s A Beach

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles8 Comments

Life’s A Beach by Lars Stewart – Buffalo (Night & Day series) – 1000 pieces

This puzzle was MUCH more enjoyable than it looks, and it looks like so much fun! It was more of a challenge than I thought, but I enjoyed that; easy puzzles can be pretty boring sometimes. This was the perfect amount of difficulty for me, and as an added bonus my son helped me along the way, and at the very end he put in a lot of pieces. I love that he helps me out lately, it does an old lady’s heart good.

Great quality Buffalo puzzle, as usual. The image reproduction was gorgeous, and I was surprised at how my picture of the completed image looks pretty much exactly like the box top. Most times they don’t, the colors are a little different or duller, but this one looks like a mirror image. The fit was very nice on this puzzle as well, almost good enough to stand up but not quite there.

Is that not a gorgeous view? I loved this section and it was the very first thing I assembled after the border. I just can’t stop looking at it. 😍

Looks like a great place to spend an afternoon, doesn’t it? Drinks, pillows, a roof so the sun isn’t beating down on you – lovely. All it needs is a massage therapist (my brain doesn’t want to let me spell mah-soose at the moment – I swear I’m not an idiot, truly, I’m just old).

It isn’t an easy puzzle, but it isn’t too difficult either – it’s Goldilocks.

Great Old Ads

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Great Old Ads by Lois B. Sutton – White Mountain – 1000 pieces

I had such a good time with this puzzle! I chose it because even though it is a collage, it doesn’t immediately look like it’ll be an easy one – this image has more intricate sections and some softer colors and is a little bit of a challenge – but completely worth it.

This was a very good quality White Mountain, and if I was very careful I could have gotten a picture of it standing up. The most surprising to me was the image reproduction; when there is an image with older products, ads, etc. the reproduction can many times be fuzzy and difficult to work with. The reproduction on this puzzle, however, was excellent! There were one or two sections where it seemed much less crisp than others, but that was the artwork on the ad itself rather that the reproduction. On the ads with lots of small printed text you can read every word! (If your eyes are good enough that is).

Um, do you remember hamburgers in a can?? I certainly don’t! Of course my mom made as much from scratch as she could, for no other reason than it was less expensive to make things yourself. She would take ground beef, add a package of onion soup mix, cut up green peppers and mix it all up. She made them into patties with a hamburger press she got from Tupperware or something and those were our burgers. Even though I was NOT a fan of the peppers in my burger, it seems 100 times more palatable than one out of a can!

(Thankfully mom always used green peppers, so the color was easy to spot in my burger and I picked out as many of those little buggers as I could find! Yes, I was and am THAT picky.😋)

I like this section for some reason I can’t really articulate, other than it makes me think of my childhood. We didn’t drink Borden milk, or really use any of their products that I can remember; but it still makes me smile to see this.

How adorable is this? I love the matching aprons on mom and daughter, the little candle holders on the cake that also remind me of my childhood, and the dish itself on top of the image. I have several of my mother’s Pyrex dishes and I think of her every single time they get used.

Even though this was a more challenging image than many of White Mountain’s collages, it was so entertaining that it went together in less than 24 hours. When I know there’s a fun puzzle on the board I can’t help myself and keep sneaking back to it to put in just a few more pieces…

just one more section…

just empty this one tray…

just….

How to Live with an Idiot

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles12 Comments

How to Live with an Idiot by Lucia Heffernan – Buffalo – 300 pieces

Adorable image that was more fun to assemble than I’d anticipated, don’t you just love it when that happens? I do! You can always count on a 300 piece Buffalo (at least I think so) to be good quality and fun to put together.

I just love all these descriptors! Although I highly doubt that intense looking kitty would think of any dog as a frenemy, a cat with a look like that on it’s face thinks all dogs are the enemy – at least in my mind.

There was no desire to puzzle at all when I started this one, but as I went along it became more and more entertaining and I was happy to keep working on it even when I should have gone and taken a break. Loved this one!

Sewing Alphabet

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles8 Comments

Sewing Alphabet by Krista Hamrick – Puzzle Twist (Something’s Amiss!) – 500 pieces

I know, I know – another mystery puzzle where the image of the whole finished puzzle isn’t shown. Why do I do this to us? Well, for me mystery puzzles are lots of fun, and this blog is about the puzzles I do, so if you’re not a fan, my apologies. But then again, I don’t apologize for loving these types of puzzles because they make me happy.

I’ve done only two of this brand before now, and I enjoy them very much. The quality is quite good all around, and their different categories of mystery means there’s plenty in the catalog to choose from: Something’s Amiss!, What’s Up?, Mixed up!, 4More!, Reveal the Color!, and Here or There?. This puzzle was Something’s Amiss!, where the image on the box is more than a bit different that the one you puzzle. On this particular image there were 30 differences between the box image and the puzzle for you to find.

It really isn’t much different than putting away the box and just using the pieces to assemble the puzzle, and that’s something I do frequently so I don’t find it that difficult. For some I know that they use the box image or poster often when they puzzle so it might be a bit more of a challenge. But don’t let that stop you from trying out one of these great puzzles, you can do it!

The Gang*

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

The Gang* – Unknown manufacturer – 150 pieces

This puzzle was just at my house somehow, because I have no memory of where it came from. There’s no markings at all on the test tube it came in showing the manufacturer, photographer, nothing at all. So it has been given a title by me, just for this post. It looks like a fun group doesn’t it? So this is “the gang” everyone. Wouldn’t you love to hang out with them for a little while, I certainly would!

The quality of these little puzzles is really quite good. Most mini or micro puzzles are only one piece shape – not these – there are a very good variety of shapes, beautiful reproduction, and a relatively good fit. This one was a little looser than Vivienne*, but still not bad at all. I wish I knew who made this puzzle so I could give them their props, because these little puzzles really impressed me.

As always, this picture is in Mom’s memory, she told me you can’t really tell the size of a very large or very small puzzle unless there is something for comparison. If you crop a picture to only show the puzzle you have no sense of the size, really. That was driven home to me when we finally assembled the entire 40,320 piece Disney puzzle. If you read along on the blog as I was assembling each section you couldn’t really tell how big each one actually was, but once you see it laid out in front of you there’s no forgetting it.

This puzzle wasn’t as big of an accomplishment, but still it made me happy, and taking that second picture made me think of mom and smile – what more could this old gal ask for? 💖