The winner of a copy of Browsing & Butterflies on 5th Avenue autographed by Charles Fazzino is…………….
Entry #2 – rleedee – Congratulations!
I’ve sent you an email, hopefully we can get your copy out to you very soon. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 🙂
Thanks to everyone who entered. I enjoyed holding this giveaway, and perhaps there will be more of them in the future!
Browsing & Butterflies on 5th Avenue is part of the new Art Gallery puzzle collection from TCG Toys’ Sure-Lox brand. I was happily surprised at the quality of this puzzle, and enjoyed it much more than anticipated. This is the first puzzle I’ve assembled with artwork by Charles Fazzino, and I loved the 3D Pop Art style – it made for a wonderfully entertaining assembly!
Sure-Lox puzzles haven’t also been on the nice list here at My Jigsaw Journal, but in the past few months I’ve assembled a couple of their puzzles in the newer packaging and was pleasantly surprised by the good quality. The chipboard is thicker, the fit is exceptional, and the image reproduction is excellent. It’s rare that a puzzle company makes significant improvement to their quality, but Sure-Lox seems to have done it. 5th Avenue makes the third Sure-Lox puzzle from the newer line that I’ve assembled, and they have all been very good quality. Well done Sure-Lox!
I was so impressed by the thicker pieces that I decided to compare them to Ravensburger to see how it held up …
The Ravensburger piece is on the top, and you can see that the chipboard of the Sure-Lox puzzle is almost the same thickness. It may not be as well compressed, but all in all I was thoroughly impressed. The pieces feel good in your hand, and the fit is excellent. You can lift and hold up the finished puzzle with no problem at all. I picked mine up and handed it to my son (who wasn’t too keen on being photographed, but oh well)….
Pretty darn nice fit if you ask me. Perhaps it could even be framed without having to use glue – not too shabby! Wonderful quality all around, and I am well and truly impressed by the new Sure-Lox line of puzzles.
The only criticism I have is that there is only one piece shape. With an image like this it isn’t too much of a problem, most of the puzzle is busy and the only large area of color is the sky. Luckily it’s broken up by quite a few butterflies, but there are a few sections where it can be somewhat tedious. But honestly, I was almost done with the assembly by then, and I was so excited to be finishing that I didn’t find it overly tiresome. Many puzzle companies are using just the one piece shape these days, and I find that I’m slowly getting used to it even if my preference is a puzzle with a variety of piece shapes.
The artwork is incredibly detailed and interesting, and the New York cityscape made for a fun assembly. I think I may be a new Charles Fazzino fan, and will definitely be looking for some more puzzles of his art. 🎨
Overall I was very happy with the quality of this puzzle – the image kept me entertained and smiling, and it’s one that is definitely recommended – instead of thumbs I’m giving it two Lady Liberties with their torches way up! 🗽🗽
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Overall Rating: Very good, highly recommended
*I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. Since this is the season of giving I’d like to lift someone’s spirits for the holidays; I wanted to give away my very gently used, autographed copy of Browsing & Butterflies on 5th Avenue to one of my readers. Since many of my readers are thrift store shopping puzzlers, I was sure they wouldn’t mind a secondhand puzzle. I when I contacted the company to inform them of my intent to hold a giveaway, they graciously offered to send a brand new autographed puzzle to the winner instead!
If you’d like this puzzle, signed by the artist, please leave a comment on this post to be entered in the giveaway. I will use a random number generator to decide on the winner, and will post the results one week from today – December 16, 2019. Good luck!
I’m assembling a 2000 piece puzzle with an extremely detailed and entertaining image by Charles Fazzino for review, and I think the progress is coming along quite well. Not bad for two day’s work even if I do say so myself. 😉
The quality is much better than expected. Get ready regular readers – this is a Sure-Lox puzzle! I have put together a couple of their 300 piece puzzles recently and have remarked on the better quality; it seems as though they’ve tried to improve their all around quality with thicker chipboard and a much nicer fit. I have to say I am duly impressed.
All the pieces are ballerinas, which is my silly name for a piece with two male and two female connectors. (Two/two = tutu = ballerina) I don’t know when mom and I came up with that name, but that’s been what we’ve called this piece shape for years. I digress. Anyway, all the pieces are the same, which may be a pain in the behind for the sky portion but I obviously haven’t gotten that far yet.
I’m working on the considerably busy lower two-thirds of the puzzle, and the single piece shape hasn’t presented much of a problem. There are three types of pieces, what I’m calling long, skinny, and fat. So when I have a building or patterned area I separate the pieces into their piles of long, skinny, and fat and start working from there. It isn’t much of a bother, and while I prefer a puzzle with multiple piece shapes I’ve found many puzzle brands are using only one shape these days. It doesn’t disqualify it from being entertaining for me.
It is, in fact, wonderfully entertaining so far, and I’m loving the very detailed image. This is the first puzzle by this artist that I’ve assembled, and I think I may be looking for more of his work. 😎🎨
This is another puzzle my daughter insisted I buy. I seem to be buying puzzles that SHE likes when we’re together, but I’ve completely enjoyed all of her choices so I’m definitely not complaining. She has excellent taste in puzzles, and knows what her momma likes. 🙂
After the assembly of the previous Sure Lox 300 piece in the newer boxes, I felt a little more confident purchasing this one. Again it had very good quality – which my fingers definitely didn’t want to type in regards to a Sure Lox puzzle. But it’s true, the new boxes contain much better quality puzzles than I’ve worked previously. The pieces are thicker and fit together very well; the image reproduction is quite good too. There is only the one piece shape, but that’s my only criticism.
This is the new box design. I’ve only tried their 300 piece puzzles so far, but the two that I’ve assembled have been very good quality. I was brave and also got myself a 500 piece with the new box, so I’ll let you know once I assemble it if the larger piece counts also have improved quality.
I love that Sure Lox has improved their quality, and I’m loving their “Giggles” images featuring the photography of John Lund. I don’t usually go for photographic images, but the adorable animals in silly situations are too cute to pass up. 😍🐶
I was very surprised by the quality of this puzzle – thick pieces and a great fit, very nice image reproduction as well. I’ve never had a Sure-Lox puzzle with such nice quality. Of course, as far as I’m concerned I’d only work these 300 piecers from them.
You’ll be shocked to hear that I bought this new, I paid retail! I was desperate to find some interesting 300 piece puzzles, saw these new looking Sure-Lox boxes and decided to give this one a try. If I get a bee in my bonnet to buy more puzzles, I may go back to Tuesday Morning and get another of these 300 piece puzzles and see if the quality is similar.
Even though I don’t always love flowers in a puzzle, I very much enjoyed this one. It was also the first image from this artist that I’ve assembled; and even though it looks as though it would be quite difficult with the art style, I found it to be just the right amount of challenging and not at all frustrating. The colors were beautiful!
This brand has always been on my naughty list, but this 300 piece puzzle was much better quality than I’ve ever had from Sure-Lox. I would definitely recommend this puzzle, but specifically only this puzzle and not the brand in general.
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Overall Rating: Very good, recommended
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