Computer Catastrophe

On March 5, 2020March 5, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles5 Comments

My sweet baby girl gave me this puzzle for Valentine’s Day; she is so generous and kind, and I’m so proud of who she is – I raised a great lady! 💗 Besides all that, she has great taste in puzzle images, how cute is this?!

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a new Artifact wooden puzzle, or any new wooden puzzle for that matter. It’s so much fun to look through the all the pieces and find the whimsies, and to see all the interesting shapes. The whimsy pieces in this puzzle are all parts of the image…

Catastrophe whims

They are all easy to find except for the interesting shapes at the top of the picture; they are shapes that are shown on the spines of two of the books, it took me a few minutes to figure out what they were. The 3 piece dragon whimsy is so cute, he’s obviously my favorite. 🐲

Catastrophe IP

The geometric shaped pieces made for an interesting assembly, but once you figure out how everything fits together it’s great fun!

Catastrophe 1

I love to see the wooden puzzles from the back, it’s always interesting to look at the shapes and how everything fits together. The cut of this puzzle is something I’ve never seen before; it’s a little simple, but was very entertaining to assemble and placing every piece was a joy.

The artwork by Randal Spangler is so whimsical and adorable, I absolutely love it! I’ve been looking around for more puzzles with his work; it looks as though Artifact and Vermont Christmas Company are the only brands who have Randal Spangler images. I’m thinking I may have to get me some more puzzles with his artwork!

Thank you again to The Baby Princess for this beautiful puzzle! 😘

Daddy’s Down Time*

On March 4, 2020March 3, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles3 Comments

Another fun image from my box of 12 puzzles by the artist Iralu. I love his bright colors and fun sketch-style drawings. They aren’t the best quality puzzles out there, but I just couldn’t resist the artwork. None of the images in this set have titles, so I am naming them as I go; since the lady in the tub puzzle was named Momma’s Me Mood, I have titled this Daddy’s Down Time*

The 300 piece puzzles in this set are better quality than the 150 piece puzzles in the same box. They’re a little thicker and fit together MUCH better, and I have no idea why that is – it makes no sense to me. I would think that they would all be manufactured in the same facility – shouldn’t the quality be the same?

Anyway, this was a fun one and I enjoyed it very much! I don’t really recommend buying puzzles in a multipack box set, the quality is usually questionable. But if you find one with artwork that you can’t live without I say go for it – everything doesn’t have to be perfect for you to enjoy putting the puzzles together. 🙂

Window Shoppers

On March 2, 2020March 2, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

There’s something really compelling about this image, but putting it into words seems to be a bit difficult for me at the moment. I can’t exactly explain why, but seeing this image took my breath away, and I just had to have it. Good thing too, because the assembly was completely entertaining!

The colors are so beautiful, the quality was excellent, and all-around this was a wonderful puzzle.

Shoppers 1

I love this lady and her manservant, looking at it makes me smile. She’s carrying the tiniest of boxes, and he can barely see over the stack he’s loaded up with. 🙂

Shoppers 2

In this group of ladies I would absolutely be the one in jeans. I wanted to be the cute girl in pretty skirts, but it never seemed to work out that way.

Shoppers 3

This section was quite entertaining to assemble. The colors of the glass windows stood out, as did the bricks. It was the right amount of challenging, and for other reasons I can’t explain putting together these buildings was great fun.

I seem to have a limited vocabulary this morning, and can’t explain why I enjoyed this puzzle so much. All I know is that I loved putting it together.

Perhaps that’s all I really need to know. 🙂

Review: Vintage Posters (Paris)

On March 1, 2020March 1, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Puzzle reviews2 Comments

Doesn’t this look like a great time? It was! I absolutely loved it, even though it seemed like it would be quite difficult I found it had the perfect amount of challenge, and wonderful quality.

Puzzler1909 (a fellow puzzle blogger) and I conducted an international puzzle swap so we could work brands that are difficult to get in our home countries. I sent an Artifact wooden puzzle and a Galison; and I received this D-Toys, a Grafika, and a bonus Art Puzzle. (It was one I really wanted, but was missing pieces, so I chose another puzzle. She sent it anyway, knowing how much I like the artist – how sweet was that?)

D-Toys can be purchased in the US, but this image was nowhere to be found at any of my usual puzzle dealers. I’ve found that some of their puzzles aren’t the best to work with, but if you get the “high quality” ones they’re absolutely lovely. The pieces are a good thickness with a nice fit and excellent hand feel, and they are altogether very very nice to work with. This puzzle was hands down the best quality D-Toys puzzle I’ve ever assembled. 🙂

There was a big party in Paris, four years after the Eiffel Tower was built, this is a poster advertising it and I think it’s gorgeous! Although I’m not sure what all the boxes on the left side are showing…

Paris 1

Will the party be so amazing that it blows you away? Is there a tornado coming? It’s very silly, but seriously, what is happening here?

Paris 2

Theater, clowns and music, this was one big bash wasn’t it? Apparently they knew how to throw at party back in the 19th century. 😉

Paris 3

I know this is meant to show that there will be acrobats at the Eiffel Tower, but to me it just looks as though they’re tossing women off head first! All kidding aside, you can see the excellent fit in all of these close up images – it was fantastic, and wonderful to work with.

This puzzle was a joy to assemble, and although I was a little nervous when I opened the box and started sorting it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I was wondering if assembling words would be more difficult with a language I don’t speak or read, but it turns out it was no problem at all. (Although it might be a challenge with a language whose characters/alphabet are different than English) The quality, the fit, the image – they all made for a fantastic assembly and a really good time. Many, many thanks to Nicola at Puzzler1909 for swapping puzzles with me – I am so looking forward to assembling the other two!

If you can find this puzzle and the image appeals to you, it is very highly recommended! 👍🗼

Details:

Title: Vintage Posters (Paris)
Artist: Unknown
Brand: D-Toys
Piece count: 1000 pieces
Size: Approx. 27 x 19 in. (68 x 47 cm)
Purchased: Used

Quality:

Board: Excellent
Cutting: Excellent
Image: Excellent
Box: Average
Fit: Very good
Puzzle Dust: Small amount
Piece cut: Grid cut
Piece shapes: Very good variety
Finish: Slightly shiny finish, lays flat

Overall Rating: Excellent, highly recommended

Movie Lovers

On February 28, 2020February 27, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles12 Comments

This was a great puzzle that went together extremely quickly; I love old posters of pretty much anything – advertisements, artwork, travel, movies, etc. It seems as though they put much more thought and effort into them back in the day as compared to now. (Or it could just be my age showing, “Back in my day……” 👵)

There were lots of titles and other words to put together, which I adore. But with an image like this I don’t start with all the words, I separate them by entire sections. If I pulled out all the pieces with words on them it would be 90% of the entire puzzle!

I’ve only seen 9 of the 32 movies shown here, I guess that means I’m not much of a cinephile. Oh well. I know it’s hard to read some of the titles because the piece shape is very obvious but of the ones you can read, how many of these movies have you seen?

Movie Lovers 1

You can’t really tell until you see them close up how good the image reproduction is – if your eyes were good enough you could read every word!

Movie Lovers 3

You can see from this picture that the fit wasn’t great; the pieces didn’t fit properly unless you really smushed them into place. I glued this puzzle for my son to hang in his room, and it looks a little better now that it’s been filled in a bit and the pieces are secured into place.

Movie Lovers 2

I’ve never even heard of this film before, but after doing a little research I find that it’s a comedy that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. So it’s no surprise that I haven’t seen it; I don’t speak French – and it was released 10 years before I was born! 🙂

Interestingly, I found this 500 piece Re-marks puzzle had poorer quality than the last few 1000 piece puzzles I’ve assembled by the same brand. It could be that I got a puzzle from the end of the run when the die was a bit duller, but usually with a smaller piece count the quality is better. I haven’t done enough 500 piece puzzles from Re-marks to be able to say for certain, but as of now my experience has been that their larger puzzles have better quality.

As per usual, I loved this collage – it was an extremely entertaining and interesting puzzle!