New 40,320 Piece Mickey Mouse Puzzle!

On June 27, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling6 Comments

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Well what do you think of this?!? I read about this puzzle on the blog of a friend from Russia, and found it already available for sale on a jigsaw puzzle site in the Czech Republic! It took a lot of searching online to find it, but I refused to give up and finally found the little bugger. 🙂

Here’s the info I was able to find:

40,320 pieces (same size as Disney Memorable Moments)
22.3 feet x 6.2 feet (680 x 190 cm)
Comes in 10 sections of 4032 pieces
Box weighs about 44 pounds
Manufactured by Ravensburger
Priced at around $500 USD 😮

This puzzle is celebrating the 90th birthday of our beloved Mickey Mouse. I wish I could get a better look at each of the 10 frames, but unfortunately I was not able to find any images of each of the sections separately. This is the best I can do for now…

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It looks as though it’s artist desk/collage images from Mickey’s past 90 years. I’m really looking forward to being able to see each panel close up – it looks like fun!

I wasn’t able to find the official title of the puzzle. It could be “Mickey – The True Original” – that’s what I can see on the front of the box; my friend in Russia says the title is “Disney – The 90th Birthday of Mickey Mouse”. According to the Czech puzzle site, the name is Puzzle Mickey Mouse. Google translate tries, but it doesn’t always do right by me, so I can’t say for sure just yet. 😉

I doubt I’ll be buying this one any time soon, but for some reason news of this puzzle really got me excited! I spent well over an hour searching everywhere I could think of to find any information I could. I’ll update with new info when I can find it, but these things seem to take a long time – especially when you’re really looking forward to them!

What do you think? Gonna give this one a go?

Aphrodite’s Vista

On June 24, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

This image scared me a little bit, I was sure it was going to be very difficult, tedious, and time consuming. Luckily – as usual – I was wrong! It went together much more easily than I thought, and I enjoyed myself very much. 🙂

I purchased this puzzle more than a month ago, I absolutely couldn’t pass up a brand new Ravensburger 500 piece puzzle for only $5.99. It’s interesting how price affects your thinking, isn’t it? If I were shopping online for puzzles I would pass by this image quickly with little to no thought about it. There’s nothing wrong with it – actually it’s quite beautiful – I just normally prefer brighter colors and more distinct lines. But put it in front of me for an extremely discounted price and I won’t be able to leave it behind. I’m a cheapskate and proud of it!

I enjoy the larger piece Ravensburgers very much; for some reason a 500 piece puzzle with the large pieces seems to go together more quickly for me than one with pieces that are the “average” size. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps because assembling a small section nets a larger finished area, giving one the sense of a bigger accomplishment. The more a puzzle is complete, the more I am encouraged to keep working on it to see the finished image.

As usual, the quality of this Ravensburger puzzle was outstanding – thick pieces, wonderful fit, and lovely image reproduction. This is a beautiful puzzle with excellent quality. Definitely recommended!

Among Friends

On June 16, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

This is such a cute puzzle, I didn’t expect it to be as much of a challenge as it was. At 200 pieces it was the perfect puzzle at the perfect time.

Ravensburger puzzles are such great quality, they’re always a joy to assemble. Even opening the box and seeing the pieces makes me happy. I’ve heard that their quality has been declining, but I haven’t actually seen any of that so far. This puzzle was a thrift store purchase and it was the usual excellent Ravensburger quality with wonderfully thick pieces, a gorgeous image, and exceptional fit.

I’ve done several puzzles with artwork by Howard Robinson, and they’ve all been “cute”. His images are usually adorable animals that seem to have a personality, and they always make me smile – this puzzle is an excellent example of that. Charming animals aren’t always the images I’m looking for, and sometimes they can be quite difficult to assemble, but they do make me happy.

Sometimes cute and easy is exactly what I need. These days the “easy” is pretty important; I’ve pretty much been in bed all day every day since the beginning of April. I haven’t been able to do many 1000 piece puzzles, or even many 500 pieces. Puzzles that are 300 pieces or less are mostly what I’ve been doing; I’ve been surprised at how much I’m enjoying them. Puzzles are great fun for me and excellent for helping me deal with stress, anxiety, and chronic pain – it doesn’t matter how many pieces there are or how big it is. Puzzles make me happy regardless of the piece count. ☺

Sometimes I worry that I’m doing too many small puzzles or too many wooden puzzles and that these aren’t always what people want to see on my blog. I have to remind myself that this blog is about the puzzles that I do, and whatever puzzles I assemble are the ones that I write about. I don’t do puzzles for other people’s enjoyment, I do them for me. You can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t try. I struggle to remember that sometimes.

So when a cutesy puzzle comes along, if I want to put it together, I do. If I have a good time putting it together that’s what’s important. If you enjoy reading about it – even better! If it’s not really your cup of tea (or pile of pieces), that’s ok. Maybe tomorrow’s puzzle will be perfect for you. 😎

Dragonfly

On May 17, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve assembled a Ravensburger, probably because most of their puzzles that I own are 1000 pieces or more. I got this one when I made a special trip to Tuesday Morning to get myself some more 300 and 500 piece puzzles. I didn’t know that store carried Ravensburger puzzles; I got this and two other 500 pieces that I have yet to assemble. I couldn’t pass up a 500 piece Ravensburger for only $5.99, even though none of the 3 puzzles I bought are my typical preferred images.

I’m finding 1000 piece puzzles overwhelming these days; when I open up a puzzle with that many pieces it’s just upsetting and too much for me. I don’t completely understand it, but I’m blaming chronic pain, depression, anxiety, and probably menopause too. Luckily there are plenty of smaller puzzles around for me to work on that allow me to decompress and just let my mind go blank – to think about nothing but the next piece. It’s one of the best things about puzzling for me, allowing me to turn off my brain and stop it from worrying and stressing and all the other crazy things it seems to do on it’s own.

This image was quite challenging, and took me a while to finish. I didn’t mind though, as long as it isn’t too difficult as to be frustrating the challenge makes it easier to tune out the world and focus only on the puzzle. The fit was slightly looser than the average Ravensburger, but it wasn’t overly annoying. The darker colors took a while to get used to, but eventually I was able to make out the smaller differences in shades that helped to put everything together properly. Fun puzzle, beautiful image, and an excellent stress reliever.

Construction Crowd

On April 26, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This puzzle was a fun image to assemble, even though there was a missing piece. I think all the children’s puzzles mom bought from the thrift store that day might have come from the same child – perhaps they didn’t take care of their puzzles. Or it could just be that they were roughly handled at the thrift store, you never know.

As usual with a Ravensburger puzzle the quality was excellent. I didn’t think I’d enjoy the image as much as I did; assembling the different vehicles was a lot of fun! I’m not sure if I’d want it as a larger piece count puzzle, but for only 60 pieces I found it pretty entertaining. 😎

If you’ve got a little one in your life who enjoys construction vehicles and puzzles, this one is definitely recommended.