Tag: Thrift Store Puzzle

Peter Pan

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

Peter Pan – Mega Puzzles (Multipack) – 300 pieces

Here is a lesson in how much the image on a puzzle contributes to your enjoyment of said puzzle. The quality of this puzzle was exactly the same as the quality on Princess of the Sea; yet with this puzzle I found the quality to be much more annoying, and the assembly was just not as entertaining. It’s all about the image, baby!

I wasn’t keen on doing this one to be honest, but my son picked it out for me so off we went. It’s a good image for puzzling, and it was enjoyable, but just not what I was looking for at that time. That’s ok though, this puzzles makes five completed from the multipack of eight Disney puzzles, only three more to go. There are two 150 pieces (Phineas and Ferb, and Disney princesses) and a 500 piece called Dapper Dandies that I completed as a 300 piece puzzle many years ago, but think I will assemble again in this different piece count. There’s always a need for smaller puzzles here.

Five down, only three to go. I absolutely got my money’s worth from this thrift store purchase!

Embroidery Table

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

Embroidery Table by Andrew Farley – Milton Bradley (Big Ben) – 1000 pieces

This gorgeous image made for a great time puzzling, and had me thinking of my momma whenever I worked on it. Is this not just a beautiful all-around puzzle? Stunning!

This section was one of the last to be completed, but one of the parts of the image that means the most to me. Mom taught me to cross-stitch at a young age, and I continued on doing that particular kind of embroidery until well into my marriage. The small skeins of floss (yes, that’s what they’re called) really brought back memories for me. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve done any cross-stich at all, but I remember vividly going to the craft store with my list of the numbers of each color that the pattern called for and picking them all out. My old eyes are failing me, but even though this particular hobby is no longer available to me, there are always puzzles with embroidery and cross-stitch to bring back memories. 💖🧵

Buttons, buttons, who’s got the buttons? The short answer is, my mom had the buttons! In tins, in jars, in whatever container she could find, she had SOOOOO many buttons. Any time I see a collection of buttons in an image the first thought that pops into my head is mom. Always.

And lastly, scissors. They were always a point of contention when I was growing up, for some reason mom could never find her “good scissors”. One of us girls had taken them to make something, or destroy something, or whatever reason we came up with – and the poor woman could never find a good pair of scissors in the house! I know how she feels now, I have my own “good scissors” and misery, woe, and pestilence to anyone who uses them or takes them without permission!

I adored this puzzle, and all the memories it brought back. And I also loved how much it made me think of her. I honestly didn’t plan it, but for me to be working on this puzzle on the anniversary of her passing – she was just letting me know she’s always with me. 💙

Jungle Guardian

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles14 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.

The Global Puzzle

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

The Global Puzzle – A Broader View – 600 pieces

Does this look like fun to any of you? I wasn’t so sure about it myself, but was intrigued by the box and that the pieces were shaped like countries, states, and provinces so I picked it up at the thrift store. For some reason I really wanted to do this puzzle at this moment, and I’m so glad I did because it was super annoying – but so fun at the same time!

I’ve done only two other puzzles from this brand, A Broader View, and both of those were circular puzzles; this one was a completely different beast. The fit was quite loose, but this puzzle is 13 years old and looks as if it’s been put together many, many times. The edges and all the ocean pieces interlock, but the countries themselves just sit next to each other as the pieces are shaped like the countries they represent. This is meant to be an educational puzzle, so if the pieces connected together you would have hints to which country is next to another – it’s better for learning the geography if there aren’t hints like that.

That the countries don’t interlock is what made working on this puzzle so annoying, but somehow it made me so happy to assemble it anyway. I sorted the pieces very generally at first; all the countries have colors so those all went together, the edge pieces of course, anything with the black or white border that wasn’t an edge, and finally ocean pieces. The number of very large pieces and very tiny pieces was amazing; here’s one of the largest shown with one of the smallest…

Nova Scotia looks teeny tiny next to India, and the difference in sizes between many large countries and smaller island countries for instance was amazing.

The back of the box tells you that it is recommended that you start with the outer black frame, move on to the oceans, and then finish with the land pieces. That was my plan, but as you know sometimes the puzzle leads you another way. The outer frame went together with no problems, but assembling the oceans was tedious.

You can see here that on the ocean pieces is a listing for each country that shows the capital city, the population, and the area in square miles. Putting all of these in alphabetical order and completing just the ocean first would be a giant slog – at least it seemed that way to me. So instead after the border I started at the top with Greenland and moved down to North America. Once those pieces were in place I then went through all the ocean pieces and picked out the countries from A-G that I could find and assembled the Pacific Ocean. I then continued with South America and repeated with country information in the Atlantic Ocean.

You can see here how none of the states connect and how it could be (and was) annoying that pieces moved around whenever a new one was found and inserted into the image.

The larger countries like Brazil, Russia, China, Australia, etc. did have some pieces that connected to each other but none that connected to other countries. This is the first half of the puzzle done, and I again had the help of my youngest son, which made me quite happy. He was intrigued by this puzzle, and helped me out by getting my magnifying glass, studying the box, and telling me the order of the countries alphabetically so that I could put the oceans together without having to consult the box myself. He also put together almost all of South America by himself while I was taking a break and resting in bed. I love that he seems to be more interested in puzzles lately!

There was something about this puzzle that my son and I absolutely loved and it was so hard to walk away from! I would have taken more breaks than I did, but my son would come back to the puzzle room and want to help some more and I just didn’t want to break the spell.

Also, this puzzle is quite large at 3 feet x 1.5 feet (91 cm x 46 cm), so be sure you have a large enough work space. It fit on my smaller puzzle board with only a few inches to spare on either side!

Unfortunately it was missing one piece, the small island nation of Tuvalu located in the South Pacific (the right side of the puzzle). But even though it was missing I did learn that Tuvalu is only 10 square miles in area, and has a population around 10,000 people; I just love an educational puzzle.💖

This would make a wonderful addition to a classroom as an excellent educational resource. I’m sending it back to the thrift store with a small note written on the box denoting a missing piece with the space circled showing where. Even with a missing piece this puzzle was entertaining, educational, and just plain ‘ol fun!

Rabbit Hole Town

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles11 Comments

Rabbit Hole Town – HUADADA – 1000 pieces

Sigh. I’ve done it again. Without realizing it I purchased another crap-tastic puzzle made in China that steals artwork and does not properly license it or credit the artist on the box. My sincere apologies. Another awful puzzle with letters on the back, a bad fit, no artist credit, and missing pieces.

After it happened the first time I vowed to take more care when buying thrift store puzzles, and I thought I had this time. When I looked at the box, it had an address in Madrid, Spain on the side and I – wrongly – assumed that meant it wasn’t one of those puzzles. I should have been more diligent and read the entire box, and will do that from now on. My only happy thought around this is that this company got exactly zero of my dollars, and what I spent went to a Goodwill store that helps out in my community.

There are three edge pieces missing, all together on one side. Normally I always choose to be positive about things like missing pieces. Not going to happen today. Today I am blaming the company, I bet this thing was missing pieces when it was brand new. I have no actual proof of that, but whatever.

Yep, I’ve got an attitude. Deal with it.

This puzzle was so tall that I decided to actually use the letters on the back to sort the puzzle and to do each half separately so I didn’t have to stand up or lean way over to reach the top and cause more pain. I’ve never done this with a puzzle before; once with a 2000 piece puzzle I laid the image sideways on my board and worked it that way but I’ve not separated a puzzle in half before.

The posted included with this puzzle is RIDICULOUSLY large. It’s exactly the size of the completed puzzle – and that’s too big to be helpful honestly. The only way to use it effectively would be to hang it up on the wall, but not everyone puzzles in a place where that’s a viable option.

The artwork is absolutely adorable, and if I knew how to find who the artist is I would give them credit. It is nowhere on the box, obviously, they can’t really advertise that they stole someone’s work and put it on their sh*t puzzle. If you know who the original artist is, please let me know in the comments so that I can at the very least credit them here on my tiny little blog.

These companies that popped up during the pandemic to take advantage of the puzzle craze that was happening don’t seem to be going anywhere, and there are more of them than ever. I would never knowingly give any of these companies my hard-earned money. It disgusts me that they steal from artists, it ticks me off that their puzzles are so popular these days and that many puzzlers think they are good quality and have no problems at all buying their products. In general it is depressing, frustrating, and enraging.

I can’t tell you what puzzles to buy, it’s really none of my business. But I can tell you how I feel about this disturbing trend and let you see it from hopefully more than one side. I understand both sides, or at least I think I do. I know that I’m lucky to be able to afford the puzzles I buy, and I also know that not everyone is able to spend as much and does their best to get as much bang for their buck as they can. I really do understand, that was me in my younger days when I didn’t have extra to spend on anything. But spending money on these puzzles keeps these trashy places in business, places that steal artwork to make a quick buck. And if the artists whose work we enjoy can’t make enough money licensing their artwork to legitimate puzzle companies then it may end up that we won’t have their work any more. If they can’t make a living at it, why continue to do it; especially when others are profiting from your creations but you aren’t.

This company needs a VERY BIG STRAW. Cause it sucks.