Tag: Thrift Store Puzzle

Nature’s Bounty Box

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

Nature’s Bounty Box – Puzzlebug – 500 pieces

You can’t believe it, right? Stacey the puzzle snob did a Puzzlebug puzzle? Yes, I did. I don’t think I’ll be doing one again soon, there are just too many excellent puzzles here at my house to be assembled; but I really liked this image and even though this brand isn’t one I ever buy, not even at the thrift store (usually) there was something about this one. And for only $0.99 cents I just had to give this brand another go because this image spoke to me.

I decided to do this puzzle on a day when I wasn’t feeling well at all. I dumped the pieces out of the box onto a tray and started sorting, but I had to take a break relatively quickly and didn’t go back in the puzzle room for the rest of the day. The next morning when I made my way back to the puzzle board I looked at the VERY thin pieces and to be perfectly honest I almost dumped them in the garbage. They were so thin, I thought to myself “there’s no way these pieces are going to fit together properly, this will be a horrible assembly”. But before I did anything I found two edge pieces that went together to check the fit, and it was much better than I anticipated. As you can see from the picture above, I didn’t toss the pieces in the trash, I continued on with the sorting and assembly.

There hasn’t been a Puzzlebug puzzle on my board in 10 years, I checked. Any fair and impartial blogger should give them another go and see if the quality has improved, right? Well, that’s not why I bought this puzzle, I just really liked the image and for some reason I’m not sure of I bought it. They’re still pretty far down the quality food chain in my opinion, but there are a couple of positives: the image reproduction is very nice, if a little shiny, and the fit is actually quite good – whole sections could be picked up and moved with no problems at all, and they have some amazing, colorful images to choose from. On the negative side; there is no variety in piece shape, every piece is either a long, thin or a short, fat ballerina, the chipboard used is very thin, there were many pieces still attached and with hanging chads, and the puzzle dust wasn’t really dust, it was bigger pieces of paper from the chipboard and there was a lot of it. I don’t normally speak about boxes because I’m not a collector and I don’t care much about them; but their boxes have a flip top, made of very thin cardboard, and if you were someone who keeps puzzles it’s the type of box that makes losing pieces easy.

The assembly was a little disappointing, but still it was fun to watch each box fill up with the chosen food as the assembly went on, and it wasn’t so easy as to be boring. I can see the draw for those people who don’t work as many puzzles as some of us and don’t know all the different brands and qualities available, or for those who don’t have as much to spend on non-essentials like puzzles. Puzzlebug has many images that look extremely entertaining to assemble, and you can’t beat the price of less than $2 brand new in most dollar stores.

There’s no judgement here if you buy this brand, however you puzzle and what puzzles you buy is none of my damn business. I enjoyed this assembly, and if you enjoy working this brand then more power to ya, truly. It’ll probably be a while before I assemble a Puzzlebug again, but I was a little more impressed with this brand than I was the last time. And honestly if I see one of their beautiful images at the thrift store (they really do have some gorgeous, colorful pictures to choose from), I just may buy another one! 😮

In fact…

The fit was so good that I got one of my favorite pictures!

I saw a post on a Facebook puzzle group recently where someone had taken several 350 and 500 piece Puzzlebug puzzles and glued each one to make placemats for the kitchen table. They looked so good, it made me stop and think it just might be a good idea to try. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Nevertheless, She Persisted

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles10 Comments

Nevertheless, She Persisted by Feitzky LLC – Cobble Hill – 1000 pieces

This thrift store find is a puzzle I’ve been wanting to do for a while and I finally found it. I wish I had better things to say about it, but my copy had either been VERY pre-loved and assembled many times or it was an extremely loose fit to begin with. Love the image – love it – but the fit left a bit to be desired.

Cobble Hill is a brand I consider to be towards the higher end of the quality scale: their linen paper makes for an excellent hand feel, their random cut makes for an entertaining assembly, the image reproduction has always been stellar, and the fit is usually good/very good. This puzzle may have been cut at the end of a run when the die is becoming duller making for a looser fit, I can’t be sure as this is a thrift store purchase. I still consider Cobble Hill puzzles to be very nice quality and I never hesitate to buy one if the image speaks to me.

To say I’m shocked that the puzzle is complete would be an understatement. The pieces were loose in the box, which was not taped up well at all. When I got to the checkout at the store and starting putting my puzzles on the counter I reached for the box under this one to find two puzzle pieces sitting there, they had come out of the box when I put it in my cart! The look and feel of the pieces told me they were Cobble Hill, so back into the box they went; but I was thinking about it all the way home and had convinced myself that there were going to be missing pieces in this one. When it came to putting in the last few pieces, I saw that their were four left – and four spaces – and I said, out loud, to no one, “I can’t believe it!”.

The piece shape is very prominent in this puzzle, which doesn’t at all detract from the enjoyment of the assembly for me, but does make getting a good picture difficult. I took several close up pictures of the puzzle but even close up it’s challenging to see the image behind all the lines. I wasn’t happy with any of them, even after messing with them in editing, so I’ve just taken a picture of the poster that came with the puzzle.

As a woman who supports women I love the thought behind this image. Without getting too political however, I question the inclusion of one of these women (who did NOT support females), and also the exclusion of the woman whose persistence in the face of bullies and having things “mansplained” to her before being silenced is the reason that Nevertheless, she persisted became a rallying cry for feminists. Just my own personal opinion of course – we ladies are still allowed to have our own opinions about things.

The loose fit was quite a bother to work with, but I still found myself lost in the assembly at times, completely focused on the pieces and where they went. I’m glad I finally got to assemble this puzzle and I did enjoy it, just not as much as I’d hoped. Still, Cobble Hill puzzles are good quality and I never hesitate to recommend them.

Princess of the Sea

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

Princess of the Sea – Mega Puzzles (Multipack) – 300 pieces

Isn’t she beautiful? Of all the puzzles in this multipack of eight Disney images this one is my favorite. Almost all of the other ones are bright and colorful and very “Disney”, but this artwork of Ariel in the style of Alphonse Mucha really stood out to me. It wasn’t the easiest 300 piece puzzle I’ve ever done, but I think it’s stunning.

I know when I purchase puzzles in a multipack that they most likely won’t be the best quality, but if the artwork is something that I love it doesn’t matter, I’ll always take the chance. I’m enjoying this multipack so far, this is the second of the puzzles I’ve done and even though the pieces are VERY thin and the fit isn’t great they’ve been entertaining. I don’t usually do Mega Puzzles as the quality is less than optimal, but with a multipack I know that going in and am almost never surprised.

*There is one image from this pack that I haven’t decided whether or not to assemble. It’s an image called Dapper Dandies, and I assembled it seven years ago. It was also the Mega Puzzles brand, but in a different piece count. I may do it again as the one in this pack is 500 pieces and the previous one was only 300 pieces. I still haven’t decided yet. Thoughts?

I documented the assembly as I went along. The first picture shows everything that I pulled out on the initial sorting, all the words and the curlicues. It was much harder than I anticipated – perhaps that’s why I’ve never done a Mucha image – they look pretty difficult! The second picture is after Ariel’s top half was assembled with all that hair; luckily that section was little easier for me. After that I just did that thing where I stare at the pieces and put them in here and there until finally it was finished.

The artwork made this one so entertaining, and I love that it isn’t your typical Disney image. If there was a multipack of Disney princesses done in this style I would snap them up in a minute! (Unless they were Ceaco, of course 😈)

This puzzle was not great quality, but that didn’t matter to me at all. The image was excellent and it was enjoyable from start to finish.

She’s gorgeous and I love her.🧜‍♀️💚

Family Dinner In Progress…

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

Family Dinner by Ed Wargo – Rose Art (Back to the Past) – 750 pieces

There’s a bit of glare on this picture, my apologies. Otherwise though, it looks pretty good, and the assembly is going very well. It’s a challenging puzzle, with both the painterly style and the block-type pieces, but I’m having fun figuring everything out.

This is another thrift store puzzle, and I’m hoping it’s complete because I absolutely adore this artwork by Ed Wargo. I can also tell you that it isn’t for sale anywhere that I could find. There are quite a few Rose Art Back to the Past puzzles available, but this is NOT one of them, it seems to be out of print (or at least out of print for right now). It makes me so thankful for thrift stores and people who pass along their puzzles for others to do; what a gift to allow others to find puzzles that make them happy at a discounted price while also helping out local businesses or charities. Thrift store puzzles are awesome!

*Someone please gently remind me of that the next time I have a thrift store puzzle with many missing pieces. You haven’t seen the post about it yet, but maybe check out the June completed puzzles page for this year and see my Sunflowers puzzle.🤬*

And so today after a lazy Sunday of napping, puzzling, napping, and shopping online for puzzles it’s time to get back to it. I’m hoping to have this one finished this morning. Only three trays of pieces left to go!

Lilac Point Glen

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

Lilac Point Glen by Charles Wysocki – Buffalo – 300 pieces

After working on a 1000 piece puzzle that was quite a challenge, this 300 piece Wysocki was just what the doctor ordered to cleanse my puzzle palate. I always enjoy working an Americana puzzle, and Charles Wysocki’s images are some of the best around in my opinion.

This is one of the puzzles I bought during my trip to the thrift store a while back, and I was happy to find that not only was it complete but it was still in excellent condition. There aren’t many smaller piece count puzzles here for me (not counting my mini puzzles, of course) and it was so nice to find a few smaller ones to keep me occupied in between larger puzzles.

The oddest thing happened when I was assembling this puzzle, my youngest son got really involved with it. Most people wouldn’t think that’s out of the ordinary – but it most definitely is! My youngest has autism, and he has never been that interested in my puzzles unless it has an image of something he enjoys like comic books or particular movies. He doesn’t really engage much unless there’s something that interests him, but to my surprise he came in when I was working on this puzzle and helped me with it. But that’s not all, he actually stayed in the puzzle room working on the puzzle when I took a break and went to lie in bed to rest!

When my husband told me he was still working on the puzzle I snuck down the hall and took this picture of him (yes, he does wear a hoodie like that in the house). I was so shocked that he was working on this puzzle without me that I had to document it with a picture!

I have no idea why this puzzle in particular interested him so much, but I absolutely love that he engaged with it and with me while we were working on it together. I definitely got more than my money’s worth from this thrift store puzzle. 💕