Cottages – Part 1

On May 1, 2020May 1, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

Cottages 1-1 — Cottages (1) by Kim Leo – Cra-Z-Art – 125/500 pieces

I am completely in love with these 500 piece puzzles from Cra-Z-Art. They are a series of shaped puzzles of various animals/houses/objects/food and they are so much fun! Each of the boxes is a total of around 500 pieces and includes between 12-16 smaller shaped puzzles. I think I’ve done all of them, but there may be one or two that I have yet to find. They’re all adorable and unbelievably entertaining, and great for when you don’t have a ton of time to sit and puzzle – or even if you prefer to sit down and put them all together at once.

I’ve assembled these 12 before, but I received another copy as a gift for Christmas from my puzzle pal Penny, and putting them together again isn’t a burden at all; I absolutely love these small shaped puzzles, and doing any of them again is a joy! 💝

This time around I’m showing each of the puzzles. This box of 12 cottages will be spread out over 4 posts: 1) to show each of the 12 puzzles close up and appreciate the artwork, and 2) to give myself a little breathing room as far as posts in the queue ready to go – I’m finding it hard to puzzle lately, sitting at the table is too painful for me for any length of time. So get ready for 4 days of tiny cottage puzzles, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Cottages 1-2

The flowers climbing up this house are so lovely; my thumb is NOT green, so I don’t know what kind of flowers grow on a climbing vine, but it sure would be pretty to have. They definitely wouldn’t survive a hurricane down here in Florida, but it’s nice to think about them adorning the front of my house. 🙂

Cottages 1-3

I love the color of this little flower shop, and more pretty climbing flowers! Also, keep an eye out for cats, you’ll find at least one in every puzzle. I thought at first the artist must definitely be a cat person, but after a bit of research I’ve learned that she and her husband live in Michigan and only have a dog. I wonder why there’s a black cat in each puzzle. Perhaps as a tribute to Heronim (Harry Wysocki, brother of Charles), another prominent Americana artist from Michigan?

Cottages 1-4

This seems like a perfect puzzle for fall; apples and pumpkins for sale, and a black cat resting on a bale of hay. Of the three cottages shown today, this one is my favorite – fall is my favorite season. Unlike some of the other cottages, this one looks as though it’s been “cut” out of a larger painting. You can see in the border that there was more going on in the background. I’d love to see the rest of the image!

Proud Lion

On February 25, 2020February 25, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles6 Comments

This puzzle is gorgeous! I’ve been impressed by the quality of these Milton Bradley puzzles, they’re very nice to work with and I love the unique images they have. I always like to have two or three (or more) smaller piece count puzzles around, sometimes it’s just nice to put together a smaller puzzle.

I started by separating the pieces into two halves, the painted side and the funky side; and I also pulled out the middle pieces – they’re easy to spot and a good place to start.

Proud Lion 1

The edges and middle done – I was even able to pick out the pieces that surround the center. (Sorry about that dark spot in the lower right corner, I spilled a drop of puzzle glue on the fabric that covers my board. I usually try to move the puzzles away from it while I’m photographing them, but it slipped my mind with this puzzle. 😉

Proud Lion 2

I started with the more difficult side, and even though I had to use my tired old lady brain cells a little more than usual I enjoyed putting it together. The second side went together more quickly, but still required a bit of brain power. Not all 300 piece puzzles are easy, they can be just as challenging as larger piece counts; I find them completely entertaining and a nice break in between assembling bigger puzzles.

I truly enjoyed the artwork and would love to find more puzzles by this artist – this image was absolutely a joy to put together and makes for a beautiful puzzle. 🦁

Yeah

On January 4, 2020January 3, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles12 Comments

Please forgive the angle of this picture, I tried to go back and fix it but the stupid photo program wouldn’t let me change anything after I’d renamed it. Stupid technology. 🤐

This was much more challenging than the previous four letter puzzle that I assembled. The shading at the back made for odd shapes, and my brain took quite a long time to wrap itself around the concept. But I loved that about it; when you know the solution is right in front of you and all you have to do is SEE it. You just have to let your brain catch up and figure it out. And then, when you finally do get it, the exhilaration is fantastic! (My PADS posse understands, don’t you?)

A friend says I should have left the other puzzle assembled and then taken a picture of “S**t Yeah!”. Why didn’t I think of that? I was moving the letters around to spell other words, and was thinking that I’m only one letter short of being able to spell my name; if I had gotten the other naughty word or even the word Crap I’d have the C so I could spell out my name in pretty letters. Ah well, I missed my chance.

This puzzle was very good quality, just like the first one. I’m quite impressed with them, especially because the company doesn’t only do puzzles. In fact, these four letter words are the only puzzles they carry. To get such good quality is a surprise, a very pleasant one. Check them out at Knock Knock.

I’ve enjoyed assembling these words/letters, and I think any of the others would be very entertaining. If you’re looking for a silly, challenging, enjoyable puzzle, I would absolutely recommend these four letter words.

S**t Yeah! 😉

Tropical Paradise 14

On January 2, 2020January 2, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Got up early in the morning because I couldn’t sleep, and finished this puzzle before hubby left for work. Pretty good!

I’m loving these wonderful little 300 piece round puzzles with such interesting images. They’re a lovely, quick puzzle when I’m not feeling well enough to start a larger one, and the colors and patterns make for such an engrossing assembly.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that so many people don’t assemble anything smaller than 1000 piece puzzles, that leaves more wonderful little gems like these for me to find and put together! 🙂

“This” and Other Spellings

On December 4, 2019December 4, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles5 Comments

I specifically bought this “word” because I would be able to spell something G-rated with it for the blog. My Jigsaw Journal is about jigsaw puzzles first and foremost, and in a smaller sense it’s about me too. This is the perfect puzzle to show both sides of the blog: the strictly jigsaw puzzle side is “This” and the part about me is the other, more R-rated word “S**t”. (Although I don’t consider it that bad of a swear word to be honest, but some people might and I don’t want to offend anyone.)

Since the naughtier word is the one actually shown on the box, I will show the letters arranged in the correct order. This is just a warning for those of you who might not want to see it, at the bottom of the post I will put a bit of empty space and then the picture. I wanted to give you a heads up, if you’re not interested, stop reading once you see the empty space. 😉

Usually when I get a puzzle from a company that makes many other products the puzzles are quite poor in quality. This Knock Knock puzzle though had wonderful quality; the pieces are a good thickness, the fit was very nice, and the image reproduction is excellent with beautiful colors and gold foil. It’s only the first puzzle from this brand that I’ve done, but I’m quite impressed with it and hope that the second puzzle I purchased is similar in quality. Their line of Four-letter puzzles isn’t all cuss words, they also have the words Sexy, Love, Yeah, and Crap. There are only two actual swear words. My second puzzle is Yeah, and I’m looking forward to it!

As my puzzle friend Penny described it when I sent her a picture – it looks like 70’s disco. I didn’t make that connection when I was assembling it, but she’s right, it absolutely looks like a disco puzzle…

This 1

I loved both the quality and the puzzle in general. Since all the letters had the same colors, it was quite difficult at the start. All these similar pieces, where to begin? I started with the S because I could see where the colors bent. Then I focused on the white stripe that runs through each letter, and I could see it curved in the S and where they met in the H and the T. Once I got going it became easier to see what I should be looking for, and it took a bit of sorting to see which bits went with which letter, it stayed difficult till the end. If you’re planning on assembling this, be prepared – it’s pretty challenging!

All in all I’m quite pleased with this purchase. I hadn’t bought any puzzles online since around April until this one. The quality is very good, the puzzle itself makes me smile, and I’m pretty darned proud of myself for getting it assembled. I’m very much looking forward to putting the next one together, I bought YEAH because I loved the colors and the way the letters looked. All the Four-letter puzzles they have are different in color and shape, and I’m hoping the next word is as entertaining as this one was. 🙂

Empty space coming up, don’t go any farther if you don’t want to see the swear word. For the rest of you guys, meet you at the bottom of the post!

This-Shit

It’s just funny to see this word spelled out with a puzzle. I love it! There was a naughtier word available, THE naughtiest word actually; but you can’t spell anything other words with it. I just adore this puzzle, it was very naughty fun! 😈