Tag: Jigsaw Puzzles

Sailing to the Tunes

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Sailing to the Tunes by Soma Folk Art – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 40 pieces

This gorgeous image was entertaining to put together, but I was wishing I had gotten this one in a larger piece count; the colors were beautiful, it’s just stunning – but it was over too quickly! I haven’t worked a Soma Folk Art image before and after looking them up I would love to do more. The artwork is so bright, colorful, and not what we usually see for jigsaw puzzle images. Love it!

You all know how I feel about Wentworth; I’ve done well over a hundred of their puzzles – small, big, shaped, easy, difficult, ones with tessellating pieces, etc. If you want to hear about their quality, please look up any of my other posts about a Wentworth puzzle because honestly after spending four days in the hospital with my cranky, elderly father I’m too exhausted to type up too much about this puzzle right now. Apologies.

This speckled counter was the only place available to work any puzzles in dad’s room, and it doesn’t make the best backdrop for showing these whimsy pieces. Apologies again. Loved these whimsies. Namaste. 🙏

*No, my dad isn’t back in the hospital. I wrote this up when I assembled the puzzle, back in June.*

Seattle

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Seattle by Eric Dowdle – Dowdle Puzzles (Mini Wooden Puzzle) – 250 pieces

This was much more enjoyable for me than I thought it would be at the beginning, don’t you love it when that happens? After putting the border together I thought this puzzle was gonna be horrible, the fit is so loose! Once I got it onto my puzzle board where the fabric helps keep it from moving too much and once I started assembling the image it got so much better.

These mini wooden puzzles from Dowdle are adorable, but I can’t say the quality is optimal. When I take a picture of a wooden puzzle I take time to “smush” it together as much as possible first (smush being a technical term 😉), so that it reduces obvious piece shapes and you can see the artwork more clearly. I did that here, but you can see – especially in the sky – that there are quite large gaps and it does not fit together snugly at all. In addition, all the pieces are the standard ones you would find in a grid cut cardboard puzzle which is a little boring for a wooden puzzle and there are no whimsies. All that being said this was still entertaining to put together, and when Penny sends me more after she’s finished them I will definitely be assembling them.

Mostly the main reason for how much I enjoyed this little guy was Eric Dowdle’s artwork, I love his images although many times they make for challenging assemblies. With this mini puzzle it was so interesting to study the pieces to see what’s happening and where something might go, and with each piece I found my brain sent me some dopamine and I was happy. That’s why I puzzle!

Loved this little plane with the banner. I’ve never been to Seattle, but I’m sure it’s lovely.

Most people know about the fish market in Seattle, if you don’t then you should google it – one of the images that comes up looks quite like this little section including the clock, “farmers market” sign and one that says “meet the producers”. It was difficult to zoom in this close on such a small puzzle, but I did the best I could.

My momma always told me to try and show how big or small some puzzles are because you can’t really tell in my pictures, so this next picture is in her memory….

She was right, of course. You can’t tell from that first picture how mini this mini puzzle is without something for comparison. This little guy really is a little guy!

Extremely loose fit but still entertaining, the artwork was absolutely beautiful and detailed and made for a very nice assembly.

Simple Pleasures

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Simple Pleasures by Steve Cameron – White Mountain – 1000 pieces

Happily, unlike the two previous White Mountain puzzles I’ve assembled, this one had very good quality and I enjoyed myself very much! I love the look of older advertising, or even images like this one where it’s in the style of old advertisements. Looks amazing and it made for great puzzling.

The fit on this puzzle was excellent, almost tight enough for me to stand the puzzle on end – which was a lovely change from the last two White Mountain puzzles whose fit was loose and floppy. Perhaps it’s where the puzzle was made, the type of chipboard, or even how sharp the dies that cut the pieces are. Whatever it was, this puzzle was very good in the fit department, which made me happy. The image reproduction was better as well, there were no blurry or fuzzy parts of the image. Overall I’d give this puzzle a very good rating, and I enjoyed myself from beginning to end!

This is one of life’s simple pleasures for me, a morning with peace and quiet and a perfect cup of coffee. Black, two sweeteners. Nothing fru-fru for me, coffee flavored coffee and that’s it. It’s a great way to start the day. Also, love the polka-dots in the background, it made these pieces easy to find.

Even if they’re store bought cookie dough, warm cookies from the oven are another of life’s simple pleasures that I relish. I was lucky enough to have a mom who made everything from scratch, and having warm cookies made with love and a tall glass of cold milk – makes me yearn for simpler times.

Of course I had to save the best part for last – completing a fun jigsaw puzzle in the middle of a jigsaw puzzle – truly a simple pleasure. All the pieces were pulled out on the initial sort, but they had to wait in their little container until everything else was finished.😉

This just speaks for itself, doesn’t it. If you know, you know. 🧩💖

Living In Bird World

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles9 Comments

Living In Bird World by Lisa Houck – Liberty Puzzles – 498 Pieces

This artwork is beautiful and so different, it made for excellent puzzling; I had a great time with this one and found myself completely absorbed in the assembly, which is exactly what I needed at the time. Beautiful artwork on an excellent quality puzzle and I even got to spend a little bit of time with my wonderful daughter who puzzled with me for half an hour or so, it was lovely. 💕

Liberty Puzzles are my favorite modern wooden puzzle company, their puzzles have beautiful artwork, and their pieces are complex and designed by some of the best in the business. Liberty puzzles have more whimsies than most other companies, and they are designed to go along with the artwork. I’ve never been disappointed by one of their puzzles, or their customer service. When I came back to the puzzle board after my two year hiatus I went a little crazy and ordered four of their large puzzles, and this beauty is one of them.

Look at these whimsies, so many birds! And because this is Bird World, there are no people at all, just birds, insects, and foliage. It made for such an entertaining assembly.

I hope you guys like these pictures of the back of wooden puzzles, because this one was a bear.🐻 When I was flipping it over I accidentally hit the light above the puzzle board and bleeped it all up! It probably took about five minutes or more to put everything back where it belonged. It made me think though, wouldn’t it be a fun exercise to assemble one of these puzzles upside down? It probably wouldn’t be as difficult as it may seem, but the only way to know is to try, right?

The symmetrical section in the middle is where I started with the assembly, the pieces were obviously easy to find. Want to know why those shapes are in this bird puzzle? Well, they all fit together to make an interesting little bird house!

I saw the image on the Liberty website, on the page for this puzzle, so of course I had to try it for myself. It took a bit of doing, and figuring out how to get the pieces connected without breaking them took me several tries and several minutes, but eventually I got there. It’s adorable! The top looks a little wonky, but I did my best. 🕊🏠

Nature’s Bounty Box

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

Nature’s Bounty Box – Puzzlebug – 500 pieces

You can’t believe it, right? Stacey the puzzle snob did a Puzzlebug puzzle? Yes, I did. I don’t think I’ll be doing one again soon, there are just too many excellent puzzles here at my house to be assembled; but I really liked this image and even though this brand isn’t one I ever buy, not even at the thrift store (usually) there was something about this one. And for only $0.99 cents I just had to give this brand another go because this image spoke to me.

I decided to do this puzzle on a day when I wasn’t feeling well at all. I dumped the pieces out of the box onto a tray and started sorting, but I had to take a break relatively quickly and didn’t go back in the puzzle room for the rest of the day. The next morning when I made my way back to the puzzle board I looked at the VERY thin pieces and to be perfectly honest I almost dumped them in the garbage. They were so thin, I thought to myself “there’s no way these pieces are going to fit together properly, this will be a horrible assembly”. But before I did anything I found two edge pieces that went together to check the fit, and it was much better than I anticipated. As you can see from the picture above, I didn’t toss the pieces in the trash, I continued on with the sorting and assembly.

There hasn’t been a Puzzlebug puzzle on my board in 10 years, I checked. Any fair and impartial blogger should give them another go and see if the quality has improved, right? Well, that’s not why I bought this puzzle, I just really liked the image and for some reason I’m not sure of I bought it. They’re still pretty far down the quality food chain in my opinion, but there are a couple of positives: the image reproduction is very nice, if a little shiny, and the fit is actually quite good – whole sections could be picked up and moved with no problems at all, and they have some amazing, colorful images to choose from. On the negative side; there is no variety in piece shape, every piece is either a long, thin or a short, fat ballerina, the chipboard used is very thin, there were many pieces still attached and with hanging chads, and the puzzle dust wasn’t really dust, it was bigger pieces of paper from the chipboard and there was a lot of it. I don’t normally speak about boxes because I’m not a collector and I don’t care much about them; but their boxes have a flip top, made of very thin cardboard, and if you were someone who keeps puzzles it’s the type of box that makes losing pieces easy.

The assembly was a little disappointing, but still it was fun to watch each box fill up with the chosen food as the assembly went on, and it wasn’t so easy as to be boring. I can see the draw for those people who don’t work as many puzzles as some of us and don’t know all the different brands and qualities available, or for those who don’t have as much to spend on non-essentials like puzzles. Puzzlebug has many images that look extremely entertaining to assemble, and you can’t beat the price of less than $2 brand new in most dollar stores.

There’s no judgement here if you buy this brand, however you puzzle and what puzzles you buy is none of my damn business. I enjoyed this assembly, and if you enjoy working this brand then more power to ya, truly. It’ll probably be a while before I assemble a Puzzlebug again, but I was a little more impressed with this brand than I was the last time. And honestly if I see one of their beautiful images at the thrift store (they really do have some gorgeous, colorful pictures to choose from), I just may buy another one! 😮

In fact…

The fit was so good that I got one of my favorite pictures!

I saw a post on a Facebook puzzle group recently where someone had taken several 350 and 500 piece Puzzlebug puzzles and glued each one to make placemats for the kitchen table. They looked so good, it made me stop and think it just might be a good idea to try. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.