Wednesday 03-08-17 90% Done!

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36,288 pieces assembled – 4,032 to go!

I don’t know how it happened so quickly, but this entire 40,320 piece puzzle is 90% finished! There is only one section left to assemble, wow!

Beauty and the Beast was as much fun as I thought it was going to be, and I’m glad I saved it till the end. Belle was so much fun to assemble, and so was the Beast. The colors are gorgeous and I loved assembling each of the smaller characters as well. I usually know all the names but I looked up the feather duster’s name because I couldn’t remember it. Babette! It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, so I don’t feel too bad that I couldn’t remember her name. I’m sure she forgives me. 😉

I enjoyed the whole puzzle, and I’m sad it’s done already. I was torn between wanting to work on it as much as possible, and wanting it to last. In the end it took about at much time as the rest of the sections, 15 days.

So now there’s only one left. Bambi. I want to just go for it and work on it as much as possible! Will I? I’m not even sure myself.

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Bambi, Thumper and Flower – look how cute they all are! I love this image, and think it’s gonna be a ton of fun to do. The carpet of flowers on the ground, the pink flowers in the trees and each of the characters are going to be fun and challenging and I’m super excited to get going.

By the way, did you know that each section has a hidden Mickey Mouse symbol? It’s easy to spot in some of them, in others you really have to search for it. You can find the one in Beauty and the Beast pretty easily, but it’s not as easy to see in this picture of Bambi. Peter Pan was the hardest to find for me, did you spot them all?

Of course it’ll be a few days before I get started (as usual) – gotta get this section off the board and sort Bambi, but I’m not in a huge hurry for that either. I’ll probably stall like last time and work a bunch of other puzzles for a few days. At least this time I’ll be conscious of the fact that I’m stalling. 🙂 Onward to Bambi!!!

Peacock Garden

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Peacock Garden by Monika Forsberg – eeBoo – 1008 pieces

Another new company 🙂 I don’t remember where I heard of them, but when I saw their 1000+ piece puzzles I really wanted to get one to try. I wasn’t disappointed!

I love the artwork for this puzzle and it was super fun to assemble. Mom and I worked on it together and had a great time! I loved being able to pull all the pieces for one small section and assemble them without having to look at the box or poster. Just a fun, entertaining puzzle all around if you ask me.

The pieces fit together wonderfully and were extremely sturdy.  The image reproduction is gorgeous and the colors are bright and beautiful. All the things I love! The only drawback for me was that the finish on the pieces was shiny and there was a lot of glare under lights. Other than that I had no problems/issues with this puzzle at all. I would definitely recommend eeBoo puzzles!

They have a really cool zodiac puzzle that I would love to do. (hint hint for those of you who know me and are looking for a gift idea 😉 )

Creepy Crawlies!

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Creepy Crawlies! – Creative Edge – 100 pieces

I know, another 100 piece puzzle. So what? All puzzles are fun if you ask me, so why not write about them? Well, I can because this blog belongs to me. 😎

This is another thrift store puzzle we bought for my friend’s son that I put together to be sure all the pieces were there. Isn’t this the perfect puzzle for little boys? Bugs are cool! Best part about the picture is that I did the puzzle on a drafting table and the color of the table makes it look like the bug in the top left corner is actually crawling off the puzzle! It makes me laugh every time I look at it. (And thanks to mom for pointing that out to me 🤗)

As an added bonus, it glows in the dark. Wanna see?

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I love that the background is what glows, and that there are hidden words you can’t see till it glows. I know, I’m way too excited about this puzzle. Oh well. 🙂

Never heard of Creative Edge, but then I don’t usually do kids puzzles. The pieces are thin, but somewhat sturdy for how thin they are. The image reproduction is quite good, the colors are crisp, and there was no image lift on any of the pieces. Piece shape variety wasn’t bad either. Good to fair quality I would say, but I’m not complaining at all – I had fun assembling it and I’m sure my honorary grandson will have fun too!

Telephones

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Telephones by Troy Litten – Galison – 550 pieces

Another new manufacturer – Galison. I liked it! Not love, but not bad at all. 🙂

I love this image, because I love collages and also my dad used to work for the phone company back when everyone had actual land line phones in their houses. We had plenty of phones to play with when we were kids, old phones that would have been thrown away we got to play with. Doesn’t seem that fun in this world of computers and tablets and smart phone apps but children used to play with things that required their imagination. Wow!

I tried assembling this puzzle once before, put together the edge pieces and then put it away – I just wasn’t in the right mood for it. Second time was the charm and I really enjoyed it. I love how a picture like this is so easy to get sucked in to. You pull the pieces for one of the squares, and that leads to the square next to it and so on and so on. So much fun!

The piece shapes were not bad, there were very few pieces that were 2 prong 2 hole. Lots more different shapes! The pieces were on the thin side, but sturdy. The coating was matte and I had no problems with glare at all, and the image reproduction was very good – the colors were crisp and bright. Very good quality overall in my opinion. I love trying new companies!

Sequoia National Park

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Sequoia National Park by Eric Dowdle – Dowdle Puzzles – 500 pieces

I really love the art of Eric Dowdle, but I must also say that they make for some difficult puzzles – this one was a challenge!

Part of the challenge was that at the factory a mistake was made, the puzzle inside the box was not what was shown on the box. We thought we were purchasing Redwood National Park. The box says we did, the poster inside was for Redwood, but the bag of pieces was what you see here. Still a cool puzzle, I wasn’t really that upset. But it did make for a more challenging assembly, no picture to go by! Of course I sometimes do this to myself purposely, I put the box away and do a puzzle with no helps just to give myself a challenge (and because I’m weird) 😉

Also, I don’t usually comment on the boxes the puzzles come in but Dowdle boxes are pretty cool in my book. Extremely sturdy one piece box that has a lid that folds over and is closed with velcro. There is a slipcover that goes over the box with the info about the puzzle, and on the inside you get a poster of the puzzle to work with, and a zip closure plastic bag to store the pieces in once you’ve finished the puzzle. A++ for the box!

This puzzle was quite a challenge for me, there is so much green and trees in the background it took way longer than is normal for me to complete a 500 piece puzzle. But I love the scene and I had no problem taking on the challenge. There are so many little animals all over the puzzle, it was fun to figure out where every one went. And at the very end I found the big eyes and one paw of an animal you can’t really see and don’t notice in the image unless you’re looking for it (or putting in the pieces there). If you look on the left edge of the puzzle about midway up you can see the paw, the eyes are darker and in the background – not easy to see, but they are there. Great puzzle 🙂

The quality of the puzzle was quite good. The pieces were about average thickness and very sturdy and they fit together quite well. The pieces were predominantly the 2 prong 2 hole variety, but within that they were all different shapes and sizes so it didn’t seem monotonous to me at all. The finish was glossy was caused a lot of glare, which is difficult sometimes with a Dowdle puzzle because there are a lot of darker areas and it’s difficult at night under lights. And a lot of the Dowdle puzzles have quite a bit of symmetry and sameness in the backgrounds which can add an extra challenge. Nothing wrong with a challenge though, it’s fun to do and you feel like you’ve accomplished something when you’re done!  I love the artwork, there isn’t one Dowdle puzzle that I wouldn’t love to own or do, so even if there is glare I don’t mind that much. Awesome images make for fun puzzles in my book!