Selfies – Part 1

On July 31, 2020July 31, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles3 Comments

Selfies 1-1 — Selfies by Howard Robinson- Cra-Z-Art – 125/500 pieces

Another fun and fantastic set of smaller shaped puzzles from Cra-Z-Art. If you hadn’t already figured it out I’ll say it plain as day – I love these puzzles! 💖

Cra-Z-Art, sometimes under the name of Lafayette Puzzle Factory, has many sets of these shaped puzzles, and I find them to be fun to assemble – and perfect for me when I am unable to sit at my puzzle table. I can take a group of pieces and assemble them on trays in bed. Perfect! Each smaller puzzle has a colored backing so that if you prefer you can separate them and assemble each puzzle one by one. Or, if you like, you can disregard the colored backing and assemble them as a regular 500 piece puzzle. Either way they’re extremely entertaining. I’ve assembled them both ways and found them to be engaging, beautiful, and lots of fun!

This set should be called “Underwater Selfies” if you ask me, but who am I to tell a puzzle company what to title their puzzles? According to the box, these are just Selfies. They are all the artwork of Howard Robinson, who is probably best known in the puzzle community for his animal selfies images. They’re all so well done, and adorable – very hard to resist in my opinion.

Selfies 1-2

Meet Bernard and Helen. They’ve been together for a while, and you can tell. Helen is the one on the left nearer the top, and Bernard is the grouchy looking one on the right, closer to the bottom. Bernard is the manager at a food mart selling algae, plankton, and small crustaceans; and Helen is a renowned artist. At the moment, Bernard is cranky because Helen spent the day watching her shows and celebrating the moments of her life with several cups of International Foods French Vanilla coffee. They’re having a tiff at the moment, we should politely back away and leave them be.

Selfies 1-3

I have no idea what species of fish this is, so his name comes from my impression of his countenance; to me there seems to be a youthful look about him. His name is Timmy. Timmy is still in school, but he’s planning on graduating next year if all goes well. He has a part time job after school delivering meals to local shut-ins and he also likes to help his mom making dinner every night. He plans on attending the Cordon Bluefin Culinary School after graduation and becoming a chef. Timmy has plans – big plans!

Selfies 1-4

This is Dakota, she’s the oldest of three girls. She’s a professional cheerleader for the local water polo team, and in her spare time she likes to watch makeup tutorials on YouTube and try out the lessons on her friends and younger sisters – Daniella and Dorinda. Her aim is to be a professional makeup artist (although between you and me, she unfortunately isn’t very good at it). Here’s hoping she finds a career path that’s a little better suited to her. Perhaps a trainer at the local pilates studio? Who knows!

These underwater selfies were lots of fun to put together, and I highly recommend giving any of these sets a try if you haven’t already. They’re good quality, with beautiful artwork, and most especially they’re enjoyable to assemble. 🐬

Birds – Part 5

On July 16, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

Birds 5-1 — Birds – Lafayette Puzzle Factory (Cra-Z-Art) – 100/500 pieces

The final part of the series of Bird puzzles from Lafayette Puzzle Factory/Cra-Z-Art – they’re fun to assemble and pretty to look at! I enjoy these small shaped puzzles so very much, I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at them too. 🙂

There are still four more new sets that I haven’t done yet, but for right now I can’t find them, because while I was sleeping one day my husband decided that he was going to give me a larger set of shelves in the puzzle room. He took all my puzzles, piles of puzzles, and everything else and put them all together in an order he thought was best.

I know he was trying to be kind and thoughtful, and while I do appreciate the sentiment …… I would very much like to hurt him. A lot. Honest and truly. A LOT. He’s extremely lucky that I love him. So very lucky. 😡

Anyway, back to the birdies!

Chastity the Chickadee. For some reason that name makes me laugh. 🙂

The picture of all three birds shows the large difference in size between some of these puzzles – there are much fewer pieces to this small puzzle than in the next one. I find it refreshing that they’re not all the same size or piece count. At least it isn’t boring to put them together.

This beautiful bird seems more feminine to me, so I have named her Bernadette the Blue Jay. Bernie for short. The color is so striking, I wish more of the bird’s back was shown so that there was more of that gorgeous blue for us to see! The slightly orange color on the breast is quite pretty in it’s own right, this bird is one of my favorites.

What a sad name – Common Yellowthroat. If someone called me a “common Stacey” they would NOT have a good day. I’m just sayin’. Since the species says she’s common, I have given her a fabulous name – Countessa the (not so) Common Yellowthroat.

I had a really good time assembling these puzzles, and I had to stop myself from giving them all backstories even though I said they didn’t have enough personality to inspire me. Once I gave them names the whole backstory just popped into my head, I made up the personalities I wanted them to have. Perhaps I should stop puzzling and try my hand at writing the great American novel.

Or, perhaps, I should stick to my beloved puzzles and just let myself be silly and crazy once in a while with these smaller shaped puzzle sets. That’s probably for the best. 😉

Birds – Part 4

On July 15, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

Birds 4-1 — Birds – Lafayette Puzzle Factory (Cra-Z-Art) – 100/500 pieces

This is the brightest, prettiest group of birds so far – the colors are beautiful! If there was one thing I didn’t like about this set of puzzles it would be that they all seem a bit duller than they should. That’s only my opinion, of course. But there’s something less bright and cheerful about this set to me. Perhaps it’s all in my head, that could very well be. We all know it’s a rough neighborhood to live, my head. Yikes.

Meet Ralph the Red Cardinal. He looks like a fun guy. When I was putting this bird together the color of the tail threw me off, it seemed much too dull to be part of this smaller puzzle. I assembled all of these puzzles without the aid of the box images, so at first I wondered if it was a branch that the bird was sitting on. The color seemed so deep and different from the body of the bird. Of course, once you follow the shapes and put everything together you see where it all fits.

This is Aunt Gertie the American Goldfinch. She looks like the nice, fun aunt who lets you get away with stuff your parents would never allow. I like Aunt Gertie.

This bird looks a little cranky to me, I’m not sure why. It looks like if I needed something I’d better think twice before asking this guy for help. His name is Tremaine. He will give you everything he has and will always help, but you’d better be sure you know what’s going on before you involve him. 😉

These birds with the duller back-ends and undersides took a little longer to put together than I thought they would. If you’re not using a picture to help guide your assembly sometimes where pieces should go and how they fit together isn’t readily apparent at first. At least that’s how it was for me. You look at them and think that it should be a quick assembly, that wasn’t always the case for me.

Whether they went quickly or a little more slowly, they were all still enjoyable and entertaining – and that’s the whole point of this wonderful hobby we call jigsaw puzzling. 🧩

Birds – Part 3

On July 12, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Birds 3-1 — Birds – Lafayette Puzzle Factory (Cra-Z-Art) – 100/500 pieces

These birds are a bit more boldly colored, bright colors do make me very happy and are more entertaining for me to assemble. And I think I’ve enjoyed these posts more, showing each and every mini puzzle. The artwork is beautiful, as is the reproduction, and they each deserve to be seen in detail.

I know I told you I didn’t want to do any research to learn about any of the birds, but this one had me googling – I wanted to know if it were possible for birds to be fat. This is the stockiest bird I’ve ever seen! Apparently this is just the build of this species, but if you are interested there are some amazing photos of seriously obese birds out there on the web. Wow.

This is Bob. He’s a Scarlet Tanager. He knows he’s pretty. He’s a smug idiot.

The Chickadee is one of two sets of duplicates within this set of 15 birds. There are two each of this species and also the Tufted Titmouse. The reason why is anyone’s guess, because I certainly don’t know. There are so many species of pretty birds out there, it seems odd to have more than one of the species with the plainest colors. An interesting choice to be sure.

I have named this one Cherry the Chickadee.

I have named this one Bolero the Bluebird. Only because I like the sound of it. 😉

It seems odd to me that this multicolored bird is named the Bluebird. Perhaps the scientists/birdwatchers who started naming birds had never seen an Indigo Bunting (shown in yesterday’s post) before giving this species the name Bluebird. There are some odd names of animals in nature, so I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Birds – Part 2

On July 11, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Birds 2-1 — Birds – Lafayette Puzzle Factory (Cra-Z-Art) – 500 pieces

More pretty birds to look at, more fun puzzles to assemble. I tried really hard to make sure that I had enough variation in color in each of the sets; sometimes it’s more difficult than you think, at least it is for me. I always worry about dumb stuff like that.

You’ve all heard me tell you how much I love these puzzles, you certainly must be sick of the same things over and over. Sorry if things are being constantly repeated, I can be a bit of a broken record sometimes.

The color of this bird – wow! It’s absolutely gorgeous, when you say a “bluebird” you don’t always see such a vibrant, beautiful color. I know speaking for myself that I basically call them all bluebirds, even though that’s not the correct name. This species is a name I hadn’t heard of before, it’s so striking though, isn’t it? I have named her Indira the Indigo Bunting.

This is Talayah’s twin sister, Tatianna. They are the Tufted Titmouse Twins. Little girls with BIG personalities. 🙂

I wish the colors were brighter and more fun, but I’m certain if they were that the birds themselves wouldn’t be very safe in their own environments. I’m guessing their slightly boring coloring helps them out in some way.