Another cute kid’s puzzle from the thrift store, but we didn’t even know we had this one! It was bagged separately in the box of another puzzle purchased. Freebie! Free is my favorite price. 😉
Excellent quality kids puzzle from Cardinal, and it was fun putting this together without the picture. Nice, thick pieces that fit together well with bright, fun colors – basically everything you’d want in a kids puzzle. It’s very well made and should last through many, many assemblies.
This was much nicer than the Troll hair puzzle. Ick! This puzzle has since been donated to a school, I’m sure they’re having a great time with it. It’s always fun to assemble kid’s puzzles for me, makes me feel like an expert puzzler! 😎
Bright Eyes – Built Rite (Warren) Puzzles – 500 pieces
Here’s an interesting puzzle from the mid 70’s, by a manufacturer that is no longer in business. From what I’ve been able to find, Built Rite puzzles were produced from the 1940’s to 1976. It’s a guess, but this looks like something from the 70’s to me. It’s so fun to try puzzles from companies we’ve never heard of!
The quality of this puzzle was fair, the pieces didn’t fit together well, and the fit was very loose. Not sure if I can blame that on the manufacturer, as this was a pre-loved puzzle from the thrift store. As you can see in the picture the tabs on the pieces aren’t rounded they are more geometric, which was interesting. The pieces themselves were a good thickness with an interesting variety of piece shapes, and the image reproduction was good with some blurriness.
This little girl is so cute I couldn’t wait to assemble it. This is another puzzle mom and I worked on together, and we had a very good time. Although the wallpaper and the little girl’s hair was a little bit of a challenge, and that is some BIG hair! It was a fun assembly; I always enjoy spending time with mom and working puzzles together. And every time I look at this picture I say “She’s so cute!” ❤
New York Times Front Page – Map Marketing – 400 pieces
Another fun find from the thrift store. This one is interesting because it was made for someone whose birthday was November 10, 1930 – that is the date on this newspaper. I’m sure everyone has seen the ads in catalogs, etc. that will show you what was happening on the day or year you were born. Well, someone had this puzzle made, very cool!
Interestingly this company is based in the UK, not the US. I suppose I assumed that because it was the New York Times that the company would be in the Us. It’s a global world now, I don’t know why I was surprised. Map Marketing makes personalized maps, puzzles, etc. I was pretty impressed with the quality of this puzzle, the pieces have the same sort of dry feel that All Jigsaw Puzzles brand has; perhaps they use the same manufacturer. All around a very nice quality puzzle with pieces that are thick and fit together well, and a nice variety of shapes. I can’t really comment on image reproduction, because it’s a copy of a newspaper that was printed a very long time ago, on very old machines. Most likely the image reproduction is very good, at least we were able to read the entire front page! 🙂
Mom and I assembled this together at her house, and we had a good time of course. This is the 2nd newspaper puzzle we’ve put together and we developed a strategy for it. It made the assembly go relatively quickly. We’re an awesome team!
It was a fun puzzle that we’re now donating to the senior center, wouldn’t it be excellent if someone there had a birthday on November 10, 1930? 🎂
Another interesting thrift store find from my resident thrift store ninja shopper. Way to go mom!
The is from the Girl Power series of puzzles by Eurographics, the motto is “girls can do anything”. Love it! They have puzzles of the many different jobs girls can do, such as an engineer, pilot, firefighter, mechanic, and many more. Although teacher seems like a job girls have always done, it’s still a part of this series and something girls can do. 🙂
The quality of this kids puzzle was excellent. Very thick pieces that fit together well, with bright and colorful image reproduction. There were also a good variety of piece shapes, which you don’t always see in a child’s puzzle. It is an all around wonderful quality puzzle. I love it when manufacturers put effort into making good quality puzzles for children!
Even though I’m a “grownup” and do adult puzzles, I still enjoy working a kids puzzle. Mom still can’t stop herself from buying them, although we mostly just give them away to friends with kids or the special needs school my daughter works for. We put them together to be sure the puzzles are complete before we give them away. Puzzling is puzzling, no matter the piece count and I’m not ashamed to say I have a good time assembling puzzles meant for children. I’m just a fun-loving kid in a old person’s body. 👧=👵
Wavy Rainbow – All Jigsaw Puzzles (Impuzzible) – 1000 pieces
Isn’t this a gorgeous image? I fell in love with it and had to get it, even though at the time I was trying not to buy more puzzles. I fell off the wagon, so to speak.
I’ve done 3 other puzzles from this company, All Jigsaw Puzzles, and I’ve never had any problem with their quality. This one though, slight problem – the color was coming off in a few spots. You can’t really tell in the picture above, but there were small bits on the edges of a few pieces where the color was coming off. I then glued the puzzle because I think it would be a beautiful wall-hanging. But spreading the glue around on the top of the puzzle with an old plastic credit card pulled more color off. I could see flecks of color in the glue before it dried, and once it was completely dry there were places where the color came completely off. This has always been my method when gluing puzzles and I have never come across this problem before.
It only affected this small portion of the puzzle, which I found odd, but perhaps it has something to do with the ink used? Whatever the reason, it isn’t something you’d want to have happen to your puzzle. I emailed the company and got an immediate response; they took care of me with excellent customer service. As I said previously, I’ve worked 3 of their other puzzles and have not had any quality issues before. The quality has been very good and I believe this was just an anomaly, they assured me they would be communicating with their manufacturer to fix the problem. I bought another of their Impuzzible images at the same time as this puzzle, and will be posting about it here. Hopefully there won’t be any more color lifting.
Quality issue aside, I enjoyed this puzzle very much. Even though it may look difficult, I didn’t find it too much of a challenge. For me the red to orange section was the most difficult, my eyes had a hard time distinguishing the difference in the colors. The rest of it was actually quite easy and fun. It really is stunning in person, and I very much enjoyed assembling mine.
This image has also been made into a puzzle by Buffalo under the name Vivid Color Challenge, in case you don’t want to take a chance on a quality problem but would still like to give the puzzle a try. It’s gorgeous!
My Jigsaw Journal 