Vibrant Puzzle Calendar Kit Puzzles 1 & 2

On September 13, 2017September 13, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

Butterflies 100 pieces

Puzzle with calendar

Flower Shop 100 pieces

Super interesting puzzles mom found at the thrift store! There are six 100 piece double sided puzzles to assemble and glue for use with a dry erase board calendar; a different image for each month.

The brand is Mega Puzzles, but they are much thicker than any Mega Puzzles I’ve done before. And the most amazing part? This is from the thrift store and everything is still inside the box! All puzzles (I’m hoping all the pieces are accounted for), the calendar, the dry erase marker, glue and a spreader to use with the glue. Wow!

The puzzles are thicker than the normal Mega Puzzle, but one side has an odd finish. I don’t know how to describe it, but you can tell which side of the puzzle you’re working on which I suppose is the reason for it. In my opinion one side looks better than the other, but it isn’t too bad. I enjoyed assembling the first puzzle (well, 2 puzzles) and have shown each side above along with the calendar. I haven’t glued the puzzles, but just placed it carefully so you can see what it looks like. Actually, pretty cool idea!

There are two different editions of this calendar kit that I was able to find online. Mega Puzzles aren’t a brand I would normally seek out, but this one is pretty neat and I wouldn’t mind finding the other edition to try. 🙂 I loved working on a 100 piece puzzle that had a more adult image; stay tuned for the other 5 puzzles!

Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs

On July 4, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Cute puzzle – thrift store purchase – and all of the pieces were there. That’s always a plus. 🙂

I haven’t really given any “bad” reviews on kids puzzles before that I can remember, but this one wasn’t great. As you can see the completed puzzle doesn’t lie flat and the pieces were extremely thin. I haven’t really gotten any Mega Puzzles that have been this lacking before, and I’m hoping this was a fluke. I haven’t done any adult puzzles from this company so I don’t have much to compare it to.

Puzzles don’t always have to be cream of the crop quality-wise (I’d love it if they were though 😉 ). I was having a bad day and resting in bed – and even though the quality is less than optimal it was an enjoyable distraction for a few minutes. The image is cute and any kid who is a fan of the Ice Age movies will enjoy this puzzle.

Snow White

On June 17, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

The colors on this puzzle are gorgeous! The image reproduction is crisp and clean and the colors are bright and beautiful. I saved this one for last because Snow White was the first section of Memorable Disney Moments that I did, so it seemed fitting for the last day of Disney week on the blog.

The pieces for the 300 piece puzzles in this box were actually bigger than the ones for the 150 piece puzzles. Odd, it’s usually the other way around, the more pieces the smaller they are. This puzzle measures approximately 11 x 16, still a bit small for a 300 piece puzzle but a good size.

The pieces fit together a little more snugly for this puzzle than the previous ones from this box, which was nice. It makes for a better tactile experience, at least I think so anyway. It didn’t take long to assemble either, and I was very impressed with the image reproduction, it was just beautiful! This was the best puzzle in the box, in my opinion, with the best quality of them all. It’s interesting that they were all from the same manufacturer but had such variation in quality, especially between the sizes.

Today is the day we complete the final assembly of the world’s largest puzzle! It’s going to be a long exhausting day for me, so I will post pictures and info about it tomorrow. Wish me luck – it’s so exciting! 😎

Cars

On June 16, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This was the last of three 150 piece puzzles in the box, and by pure coincidence the new Cars movie is being released today! Perfect time for this puzzle, don’t you think?

Thankfully all the pieces were accounted for in this puzzle, and it was another quick and easy assembly. Lightning McQueen was easy to pull pieces for, and after he was finished the rest of the puzzle kind of falls into place. Pull the trees and sky, then Mater and Fillmore, and finally Guido and any filler or background pieces left over. Quick and fun, and not too bad quality-wise.

The pieces are thin, but there was no image lift on this puzzle, the pieces fit together well, the image reproduction was very nice, and it’s not so difficult that it would be frustrating for a child. The pieces are small for a child’s puzzle, so I wouldn’t recommend it for very young children, perhaps 6 years or older; the recommendation on the box say ages 6-99.

Disney – Pixar movies were the ones released when my children were young, and hopefully they have good memories of watching them with their parents. As soon as the movies were released on VHS (yes, I’m that old), we all piled in the car and went to the store to buy a copy. We watched them together as a family, and I have wonderful memories of spending time with the kids – laughing at the jokes and getting emotional at the sad parts – but enjoying just being with them and watching them discover the wonder of Disney movies. Perhaps they will one day share these movies with their own children and create new and wonderful memories too. ❤🎞

Disney Princesses

On June 15, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Another puzzle with missing pieces unfortunately. In addition, someone managed to spill ink onto some of the pieces – ouch.

I’m not sure if this puzzle was a favorite and assembled more often than the others, or if the quality was lacking. The pieces fit together well enough, but in addition to being quite thin there were several pieces with the image lifting up as you can see above. The colors were more muted than most of the other puzzles in this collection, but still pretty. I can’t definitively say that quality is the reason for the image lift, as I didn’t see that problem with any of the other puzzles in this box. I try to err on the side of positivity if I’m not sure, and so I’ll say that most likely this was the puzzle most loved and assembled which accounts for the extra wear and tear.

The assembly was quick and easy, in fact I assembled all 3 of the 150 piece puzzles in the same day. They were small enough to assemble on a cookie sheet and I was able to be in bed resting but still get some puzzling done! 🙂

Mom and I had to travel to a doctor’s appointment this week, and were discussing movies we would have liked to see in the Memorable Moments puzzle. Doing this princesses puzzle made me wonder what criteria was used to decide which movies to include – I think Sleeping Beauty would have made a gorgeous section! And mom and I both agreed that The Aristocats would have been great too – we both loved the movie and it had such wonderful songs and music (important criteria in our family), and those adorable kittens would have made for a delightful section as well. But there have been so many great Disney movies, I don’t think you’d ever make everyone happy with your choices unless every single Disney movie was included – how big would that puzzle be? 😮

This puzzle won’t be going to my grandson’s house since it’s missing pieces and damaged, but it’s Disney week and I wanted to add it to the blog because two of these princesses are in the giant Disney puzzle. Poor Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) was left out, but at least she made it here to My Jigsaw Journal. 😎