Tag: Multipack Puzzles

Jungle Guardian

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles5 Comments

Jungle Guardian by Jim Salvati – Mega Puzzles (Multipack) – 500 pieces

Without having completed all the puzzles in this multipack I can confidently say this is by far the most difficult of the bunch! All these muted colors, brush strokes, and lack of variety in piece shape made for quite a challenge. Good thing the Puzzle Goddess hasn’t lost too much of her mojo. 🧩👑

I was actually looking for a challenge when I chose this puzzle, and boy did I find it. It was harder than I expected, and I expected it to be quite hard. I wasn’t counting on those brush strokes, they made it quite a formidable solve.

It was my mistake thinking this would be like the other Disney puzzles in this box, a computer generated image – this one and the other 500 piece puzzle both have artwork done by actual people and that makes them much more of a task in my opinion. I’m not a fan of fine art puzzles mostly for this reason, the brush strokes make each piece seem like just a blob of color and my poor old eyes just can’t quite see the image in there anymore.

One of the reasons this was so difficult was the piece shapes; this puzzle only had ballerinas in two shapes, one was taller and fatter, one longer and thinner. But they weren’t as easy to distinguish from one another as I would have liked. I separated them by those shapes, and there were quite a few I missed or just plain ‘ol got wrong because the shapes were so similar. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it would have been better if they’d been more like the shapes in a Puzzlebug puzzle; the taller, fatter ones could never get mixed up with their longer, skinnier ones – that would have helped a bit with this puzzle.

Even though it was tough I still enjoyed the challenge of it – and I can’t tell you how happy I was when I finally finished Bagheera, he was the hardest part of the whole thing! The rush of dopamine it sent my brain was amazing, I was so proud.

Chosen One

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

Chosen One – Mega Puzzles (Multipack) – 150 pieces

Here’s another fun puzzle from my multipack I found at the thrift store. I’m not in love with all of the images included, but this movie has a special place in my heart and I like the look of this one. It was pretty awful quality, but still was fun to assemble. It’s so nice for me to work on a smaller piece count after finishing a larger puzzle, it feels like a palate cleanser.

Many of the pieces had this problem; the die didn’t cut all the way through, and when someone separated the pieces the paper gets torn. Once it’s torn it can leave paper sticking up like this which makes the piece lift up off of the board. Annoying.

This is another puzzle where I documented the assembly as I went along, with a smaller puzzle it’s over so quickly and the puzzle doesn’t really need closeups to show you certain parts of the image. It’s more fun to just see how it came together – at least I think it is.

Of course it got started with the words, they’re almost always my favorite part.

Sorry about the glare, I didn’t check the picture before I continued on with the assembly – and I should have. I’ll get better at it if I start doing more in progress assembly pictures. Although you can’t see him well Buzz is mostly finished here.

After Buzz was done I just grabbed all the pieces with blue/purple of the little green men/squeeze toy aliens; it’s just fun to go where the pieces take you, especially on a smaller puzzle. This one was really enjoyable.

Even though this was missing a piece it was still great fun to put together and I enjoyed it. This puzzle came from a multipack, so it may be that the wandering piece found it’s way into a small bag with a different puzzle – or it could be long gone. You never know. Still even with a missing piece this was entertaining and made me smile. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Quilting Bee

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

Quilting Bee by Kay Lamb Shannon – Bits & Pieces – 300 pieces (Large Pieces)

Love this country/Americana image, and although it was entertaining it wasn’t great. I was hoping to enjoy it more, perhaps the problem is my expectations. There was nothing wrong with the quality or the image, it just wasn’t what I wanted unfortunately.

Bits & Pieces is a company whose quality isn’t my taste, but I will buy them if I like the image and can find them secondhand. In my post about this puzzle while it was in progress I talked about keeping “tools” in my purse for thrift store shopping, and how I opened this box to find that each puzzle in the multipack was bagged separately and had it’s own image printed out. It had definitely been well cared for, so I took a chance. I paid $3.99 for four 300 piece puzzles, not bad at all! All of the images in this multipack were cute country images, ones I probably wouldn’t buy on their own but in a multipack of smaller piece counts they’re perfect for me, and the artwork of Kay Lamb Shannon is detailed and beautiful. It was an excellent find.

I’m not really a fan of this cut, it’s almost circular and makes for many pieces that are almost triangular. I have no reason to not like it other than just my own personal preference. Everyone is different. I love a truly random cut puzzle, and I enjoy both grid and ribbon cut as well; this one though, I am just NOT a fan.

I saved the quilt for the last bit of assembly, I love to assemble quilts! Again, I have no real reason I can come up with, I just do. No apologies, no excuses – I like what I like.

This little puzzle was enjoyable, and other than the glare from the finish the quality was very good. It was a very nice palate cleanser after a 1000 piece puzzle, and before I start another larger piece count. That’s exactly what I have those smaller puzzles for, and this one certainly did it’s job. 😉

Princess of the Sea

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

Princess of the Sea – Mega Puzzles (Multipack) – 300 pieces

Isn’t she beautiful? Of all the puzzles in this multipack of eight Disney images this one is my favorite. Almost all of the other ones are bright and colorful and very “Disney”, but this artwork of Ariel in the style of Alphonse Mucha really stood out to me. It wasn’t the easiest 300 piece puzzle I’ve ever done, but I think it’s stunning.

I know when I purchase puzzles in a multipack that they most likely won’t be the best quality, but if the artwork is something that I love it doesn’t matter, I’ll always take the chance. I’m enjoying this multipack so far, this is the second of the puzzles I’ve done and even though the pieces are VERY thin and the fit isn’t great they’ve been entertaining. I don’t usually do Mega Puzzles as the quality is less than optimal, but with a multipack I know that going in and am almost never surprised.

*There is one image from this pack that I haven’t decided whether or not to assemble. It’s an image called Dapper Dandies, and I assembled it seven years ago. It was also the Mega Puzzles brand, but in a different piece count. I may do it again as the one in this pack is 500 pieces and the previous one was only 300 pieces. I still haven’t decided yet. Thoughts?

I documented the assembly as I went along. The first picture shows everything that I pulled out on the initial sorting, all the words and the curlicues. It was much harder than I anticipated – perhaps that’s why I’ve never done a Mucha image – they look pretty difficult! The second picture is after Ariel’s top half was assembled with all that hair; luckily that section was little easier for me. After that I just did that thing where I stare at the pieces and put them in here and there until finally it was finished.

The artwork made this one so entertaining, and I love that it isn’t your typical Disney image. If there was a multipack of Disney princesses done in this style I would snap them up in a minute! (Unless they were Ceaco, of course 😈)

This puzzle was not great quality, but that didn’t matter to me at all. The image was excellent and it was enjoyable from start to finish.

She’s gorgeous and I love her.🧜‍♀️💚

Quilting Bee In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Thrift Store Puzzles8 Comments

Quilting Bee by Kay Lamb Shannon – Bits & Pieces – 300 pieces (Large Piece)

This one is coming along, yesterday was a pretty bad pain day for me so I didn’t get far on this puzzle before I stopped and took a nap. Naps are amazing. I love naps. Sorry, I got off track there. Apologies. Anyway, about this puzzle, it shouldn’t take me too long today to finish it up – it’s coming together quite nicely.

I’ve found that many companies whose quality I don’t necessarily care for have very nice large piece puzzles. The bigger pieces for easier handling seem as though they’re thicker and sturdier and they fit together well. These fit into that category and are nice quality puzzles, and I’m very happy with them so far.

After the border all the red pieces were pulled out and I put together all the red clothes and the tractor – didn’t pull barn pieces because they look much more orange, and I’m trying to save the quilt for last as I know it’s going to be fun to do. Next it’ll be grass, animals, a few people and some buildings until we get to the quilt at the end.

On my second visit to the thrift store this year I found two multipacks of Bits & Pieces puzzles; one was a set of four 300 large piece puzzles with images by Kay Lamb Shannon – including this one, the second was a set of four 500 piece puzzles with images by Larry Jones. Bits & Pieces is a company I don’t purchase new, but if there are good images and I can check out the pieces first I will buy them used. These were all good looking puzzles with not too much wear, they had images inside for each puzzle, and they were all bagged separately. Not every thrifted puzzle is that well taken care of, these were a bargain, and now I have several smaller piece count puzzles here to choose from when a larger puzzle isn’t what I want.

Mom and I always carried something sharp in our purses, along with a small roll of tape when we went thrift store shopping. There are a few brands we won’t buy unless we can look at the pieces, and with our tools we could open up a box to look at it’s contents, and tape it back up if we decided not to buy it. I have gotten back into that habit, so I’m always ready to check things out if I need to take a peek inside. 😉