This was an extremely entertaining thrift store find! There were 2 missing pieces, but it didn’t detract much from the assembly. With all the bright colors and interesting patterns it kept me happy for a couple of days. 🙂
The quality was good, with an excellent fit. The pieces are a little thinner than your premium brands, but not nearly as thin and flexible as the cheapest ones. I never hesitate buying Re-marks puzzles, in my opinion they’re a good middle-of-the-road quality puzzle and they have some beautiful images to work. Everyone has their own preferences though, and the only real way to know is to try them yourself.
I loved assembling the basket of yarn, and made myself wait for that part until almost the very end.
Many times I try to hold off on what I think will be the most entertaining section until the end of the puzzle. I don’t want to get the best part done too early and then peter out with filling in the rest. I needn’t have worried with this one though, I had a great time with the whole thing!
The Wedding Shop by John O’Brien – FX Schmid – 300 pieces
This is the second time I have assembled this image. The first time it was named Rue L’Amour , was made by Cobble Hill, and was 500 pieces. The assembly was lovely both times, but I think I preferred the Cobble Hill only because it had more pieces and was a little more of a challenge.
They were both excellent quality puzzles. FX Schmid has (mostly) Ravensburger quality with a wonderful fit and beautiful image reproduction. I think this is the first 300 piece from this brand that I’ve worked, and it was quite nice. There was the slightest bit of warping on the pieces, but I live in the land of humidity so it’s difficult to say whether or not that played any part in it.
John O’Brien really captures the dreamy quality of wedding gowns in a bridal shop in this image, it’s just beautiful.
Afternoon at the Park by Steve Read – MasterPieces – 500 pieces
Such an adorable puzzle! It’s also an image with hidden animals, some you can see in the image as it is, and some you can only see when you look at the glow in the dark image. Most of the glow was no longer visible, even after sitting it outside in the sun for about 20 minutes there was almost no glow at all. It doesn’t really matter though, it was still a cute puzzle that was entertaining to assemble.
The quality was quite good, it had an offset grid cut and pieces that were a good thickness and fit together very well. It was a bit shiny, but the image reproduction was otherwise very good. I had a great time with the assembly. 🙂
I started with the easiest pieces to find, and the gorgeous puppy.
I’m getting close to the end here, and it was a bit more difficult than I’d assumed. Difficult doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable though, I like having to concentrate and focus all my attention; it’s part of what’s great about puzzling for me. It turns off my brain to almost all other thoughts and I’m only thinking about shapes and colors and what goes where. It’s almost like meditation.
The pug’s face was almost the last thing I assembled, but look how cute it is! Can you see the hidden kitty in his fur?
Municipal Bldg. New York – Pastime Puzzles? – 1600 pieces
Cue the fanfare and fireworks, the Puzzle Posse has completed The Challenge of 2019! The Mystery Box Puzzle I gave to mom for Christmas is finally finished! 🎇👵👵🎇
It took us almost 7 weeks, but partly because we only wanted to work on it together; we had to wait for days when we were both available and able to puzzle. There were many days with no progress made at all, but we loved all the time we got to spend together. ❤
I purchased this from eBay, it was just a random box of vintage wooden puzzle pieces. I had no idea how many puzzles were in the box or if any of them were complete. One of the absolute best puzzle purchases ever! It was given to mom for Christmas last year, the gift wasn’t the actual puzzle, but the time we would be able to spend with each other assembling it – and if I had spent 10 times as much money as I did it still would have been worth it (but I’m certainly happy that I didn’t have to empty my wallet quite that much 😉 ).
It’s a fantastic image – and was extremely challenging; not only the busyness of the bottom portion of the puzzle, but the deviousness of the color line cutting. They weren’t playing around back in the days of hand cut wooden puzzles! Sometimes you could rely on the image to help you with assembly, but where one thing meets another – watch out! We loved it❣
From what little research I was able to do, we believe this is a Pastime Puzzle manufactured by Parker Brothers. Two of the pieces had the word Parker written on the back, and some of the pieces look almost exactly like examples of pieces produced by Parker Brothers for their Pastime Puzzles shown in The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History by Anne D. Williams. It’s our moderately educated guess. If you have any information about this puzzle, I’d love to hear from you!
The puzzle was missing only 2 pieces out of 1600, which isn’t bad at all. Sure, it’s a tiny bit of a disappointment, but it takes nothing away from our enjoyment of the assembly. We believe this was manufactured in the early 1900’s, so it’s most likely at least around 80 years old. The swastika shaped piece in the sky portion makes us think it most likely pre-dates World War II, so that’s our best guesstimate. Missing two pieces doesn’t seem like that much of a big deal when you consider how old it is and how many total pieces there are.
We wanted to get a good close up of the amazing color line cuts to show you, it’s something, isn’t it? Unless you’ve worked with this type of cutting before it’s difficult to explain how this messes with your mind. Your eyes are telling you that the piece that should fit next to something should be a certain shade or color, but you absolutely cannot trust that! Bright sidewalk next to the dark green of the grass with the cuts made almost exactly where the colors meet – it’s an incredibly strenuous mental workout!
Here is just another example of the color line cutting, and the puff of white smoke from that smokestack kept us guessing until almost the very end! You can see here where the hand coloring has been added – and it looks as if it was painted directly onto the puzzle image itself. The green of the grass and trees was enhanced, as were the 3 American flags, the cupola of one of the smaller buildings, and the white smoke. This is a beautifully crafted puzzle, stunning in it’s complexity and quality!
This part had us faked out, we were certain it should have been at the top of the puzzle somewhere, and spent too much time looking for where we thought it should have fit in. Again, with no help from an image our brains were tricking us – it’s in the lower third of the image, nowhere near the top. We had to override our puzzling instincts and just go where the piece shapes took us. 🙂
Here’s my adorable mom with “the best Christmas present she’s ever gotten”. Her words, not mine. ☺ You can tell from this picture how very large this puzzle is, approximately 30 x 40 inches. Wow. The Posse has done it again!
From this…
To this…
In 48 days! With no box, picture, or a clue as to what it might be I think we did a pretty damn good job! I have no idea what we’re going to do with ourselves now, mom says we have to find another big project. It’s her turn to find us something awesome!
Not the best quality, but I still enjoyed myself; blocks of color make me happy (or perhaps I should say circles of color 😉 ).
I’ve done other cra-z-art puzzles with very good quality, just depends on the puzzle and place of manufacture I guess. These were quite thin and slightly warped, but being a second-hand purchase I can’t blame the warping on the quality because I don’t know exactly how it’s been used or cared for.
It’s a cute little puzzle that was fun to assemble, even if there was only one piece shape. 😎
My Jigsaw Journal 