Tag: Jigsaw Puzzles

Battleship

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles10 Comments

Battleship – Spin Master – 1000 pieces

These board game puzzles seem to be growing on me, each one I complete seems to be more entertaining than the last; this one was my favorite assembly so far. The quality remains the same, but perhaps I’m more used to it now and it doesn’t seem as disappointing as before. It’s a good quality puzzle, overall.

There’s only one more left here at the house to assemble (Guess Who?), but there are actually three more in the series. The other two, Life and Monopoly, aren’t ones that we’ve been able to find; that’s alright with me though, neither of them were ever games that I enjoyed playing very much. The puzzles themselves would most likely be much more fun than playing the games, although you never can tell.

In all honesty, I’ve never even played Guess Who?, but the puzzle itself looks like it’ll be both challenging and engaging and I’m looking forward to it.

Unfortunately I’ve already told my best story about 70s commercials in the post about this puzzle when it was in progress. I did get more of the story recently though. We had a small get together at the house to celebrate both mine and my father’s birthday, and he re-told the story of my doing jingles and commercials at the grocery store (I told you my parents love to tell this one). He told me that my mother ordered me to “stop singing commercials next to me!”; my response was to go to the next aisle over, where I wasn’t next to her, and kept right on singing and quoting tv ads. What a little imp I was!

The blue background here was one of the last bits to be assembled, but it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. In fact, the entire puzzle was easier than anticipated. Not too easy, of course, but the challenge level was just about right. There was never a point where I needed to separate by piece shape, and overall it was a great assembly from beginning to end.

Rainbow Tarts

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

Rainbow Tarts – Buffalo – 300 pieces

This was a perfect puzzle for when I wasn’t feeling up to much puzzling – it was easy to sort and assemble – which was just what I needed. It had a quality problem, but it was still a fun one to put together.

I normally don’t have problems with Buffalo puzzles, but there was an issue with the image on this puzzle. There were tears in the image, as if the pieces weren’t cut all the way through and they tore when the pieces came apart. They were small little rips, but still noticeable to me. I emailed Buffalo about the problem, and have yet to hear back from them other than the automated response.

It was so easy to sort that it was no problem at all to assemble this line by line. The most difficult colors were the first three lines, after that it was even easier!

Even though this would have been easy to finish in no time at all it was on my board for a few days, I took my time because I wasn’t really in the mood to puzzle – but I needed to just the same. When my mood gets very low I don’t want to do anything at all; puzzling can help me out of it, but sometimes I need to force it and that’s when these smaller piece count puzzles are the best choice.

Dino Glow

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

Dino Glow (?) – Ceaco – 100 pieces

Yes, dear readers, I assembled a Ceaco puzzle. It’s from the thrift store, and came taped up with another glow in the dark puzzle (both new and unopened) from the same brand. Since it’s second-hand, and Ceaco gets none of my money, in my mind it was perfectly fine to buy it.

I always like to have a few kids puzzles here at the house; when I’m in a mood and feeling b*tchy it’s better for me to do something quick and easy than to try a much larger one that I would normally assemble. Plus, kids puzzles are fun!

Glow in the dark pictures are always difficult for me to take. The lights are turned off and even though I try my best, it’s challenging to get both the puzzle itself centered and the actual glow. I’ve gotten some good pictures before; this one is alright, but it isn’t one of my best.

It was a good quality puzzle, although the fit was a bit loose. I took it outside to “charge up” the glow in the sunlight, and had to be quite careful because pieces wanted to come apart when the puzzle was moved. Happily for me, the glow on this puzzle wasn’t the sandy-feeling chemical that all the previous GITD puzzles I’ve assembled have – it feels more like lines of dried hot glue. If you have a tactile aversion to GITD puzzles like I do, this type of glow was much nicer to puzzle with.

Orca Sunrise

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Orca Sunrise – MicroPuzzles – 150 pieces

My daughter fell in love with this image when she saw it, but she never actually wanted to help with the assembly for some reason. I know she tried a couple of times, but was frustrated with the difficulty. Still, it’s beautiful artwork and was quite entertaining to assemble.

You can see in the above picture that the fit was very good, as was the all around quality – as is usual for MicroPuzzles. There’s something about working with these little puzzles that is so satisfying for me, though I still struggle to explain why that is. I don’t really need to spell it out though, as long as they remain fun to assemble that’s all I really need. 😊

Pet Shop

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

Pet Shop by Eric Dowdle – Dowdle Puzzles – 300 pieces

This 300 piece puzzle was surprisingly difficult, and although the finished image looks as if it would be easy to pick out certain sections – it wasn’t! Almost every piece looked quite blue, and it went much more slowly than usual for a puzzle with only 300 pieces.

Still, it was excellent quality, and I enjoyed the challenge of it. I normally don’t have to pay as much attention to minute details in a puzzle of this size – this one was packed with animals and cages, and you had to concentrate and focus intensely – it was lots of fun!

It’s been several years since I put together a Dowdle image, and even then it was on a MasterPieces puzzle, not the Dowdle brand. I find Eric Dowdle’s artwork to make for challenging puzzles no matter the piece count; but I love his symmetry, precision, and color choices even though the images themselves aren’t easy to assemble.

My last Dowdle brand puzzle was back in 2020, and reading back through it I found I was annoyed that there was only piece shape (even though Cats Around the World was a wonderfully fun image) – thankfully this one had a nice variety of shapes and was very good quality all around. My only issue was the very shiny finish; it made assembly under my artificial lighting difficult.

My son loved this little sign, it was the first thing he noticed when he looked at the box image. That husky looks like he’s staring down whatever animal or person he’s about to go after – those blue eyes are so disconcerting!

The rabbit just hanging out and casually holding onto his carrot made me smile, there’s something just so silly about it. 🐰🥕

My regular readers know I’m not much of a cat person at all, but I loved the names on this cage – Oscar and Tartar Sauce. Who do you think is the grumpy one in the back? My guess is that’s Oscar. For some reason that grumpy face and the name Tartar Sauce just don’t seem to go together.

There was a legend on the back of the poster as well, with a detail or two about each of the species featured in the image. Some of it was new information – and you know I love educational puzzles that teach me something. Did you know that some koi fish have a lifespan of over 200 years? Amazing!

But the most interesting fact I learned was given about hamsters. Many people know that animals are diurnal (active during the day) or nocturnal (active at night), and some are cathemeral (active during both daylight and darkness). There is a fourth classification though; some animals, like hamsters, are “crepuscular” – which means they are most active during the twilight hours. Perhaps it isn’t as interesting to you as it was to me, but I found it fascinating, and did a bit of research into it. There are 534 species that are crepuscular!

Sorry, got a little off track there…back to the puzzle. Pet Shop was an entertaining, difficult, very good quality puzzle with an image packed full of fun animals to find and assemble. I enjoyed it very much. 🧩💚