Tag: Thrift Store Puzzle

Bee Farm

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

Bee Farm by Tom Wood – SunsOut – 300 pieces

There’s something about this image. I don’t know why, but it’s just compelling. I’m not much of a SunsOut fan, but when I saw this puzzle at the thrift store I had to get it.

The puzzle itself was good quality, I loved the random cut pieces – it’s a nice change from grid cut. It takes a few minutes for my brain to catch up and remember how to look at the pieces and see how they could fit together; but it’s nice to switch things up and keep my gray matter on it’s toes, so to speak. The fit was on the loose side, but it’s a pre-loved puzzle and that’s to be expected sometimes.

The assembly didn’t take very long, and the most difficult part was the two beehives. I enjoyed it very much and it was completely worth the $1.99 I spent on it. Excellent image by Tom Wood, and it made for a great afternoon of puzzling.

Moon Fairy

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

Moon Fairy by Garry Walton – MasterPieces – 300 pieces

This puzzle went together very quickly, it’s a beautiful image and was truly entertaining to assemble. It reminds me of a puzzle by the same artist that I completed almost five years ago called Dancing Fairies. Same colors, same fairy – they’re very, very similar – so much so that I remember it all these years later.

The puzzle had very good quality, with thick pieces that were slightly warped, but that could be because of where I live. The humidity does weird things to puzzles if you don’t store them properly (and this is a thrift store purchase). Otherwise I was quite happy with this puzzle and it’s assembly. Lots of fun!

Got a beautiful glow in the dark picture too!

I worked on this puzzle in bed, on my white board – and hubby helped. Of course, he had a bit of an ulterior motive for helping me finish it as soon as possible; we needed the board for something else and he didn’t want to have to wait.

We also use my white board as a table so that we can play Yahtzee in bed. I’m stuck there a lot of the time, and to keep our minds from going completely to mush from watching too much tv we also having a Yahtzee tournament going on. We play several games at a time, and keep track of our cumulative score; the first one to reach 100,000 points is the winner. Loser has to do the cooking on the winner’s night for a month (each of us in the family has one night a week where they are responsible for dinner). We’re up to almost 70,000 points at the moment.

Once we finish this tournament we’re planning on starting again – and we’re shooting for 250,000 points next time, although we haven’t thought about what the winner’s prize will be. It’s gotta be something good! 🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲

Irons in the Fire

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

Irons in the Fire – Bepuzzled – 135 pieces

Normally “mystery” puzzles aren’t my thing. Not because I don’t care for the mystery aspect of it, but because almost every single one I’ve ever done or looked at has had terrible quality. This was a thrift store purchase though, and for some reason I was willing to take a chance on it this time.

It’s a good thing too, because this is the best quality puzzle from this brand that I’ve ever seen. The pieces were thick (like, Ravensburger thick) and fit together well, if slightly loosely. It’s a double-sided puzzle, so one side is shinier and feels a little more stiff; but that is how double-sided puzzles are, no matter the brand. Overall, the quality was impressive.

**I’m going to say that I’ve done a few Bepuzzled puzzles before, and my impression is that overall the quality is underwhelming, and at times REALLY bad. My opinion is only for this puzzle, not the brand.**

Here’s the mystery…. Four business partners are golfing; Howie, Will, Flip, and Duff. Someone has been selling company secrets and a private detective has been hired by Howie to find out who. Howie gets attacked and kidnapped after the round of golf, and what is found is the following picture. (There’s much more info to the story, but this is the gist of it)

I’m giving the solution below, so stop reading here if you have this puzzle and don’t want any spoilers.

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What the police found was everything in disarray, but four clubs laid out neatly in a row next to his open cell phone. The 3, 5, 4, and 7 irons in a row – using the number/letter combinations on the phone – spell out who was stealing company secrets and who arranged to have Howie taken.

Flip.

Life Rules

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles5 Comments

Life Rules by Louise Carey – Andrews + Blaine – 1000 pieces

This was not an easy puzzle. Luckily, I was looking for a difficult/tedious puzzle to put on the board while I was working on all the micro puzzles for the holiday season – this one fit the bill perfectly. Putting together large letters isn’t as simple as some may think. This one tried to melt my brain!

I always love having words to assemble in a puzzle, but when the words are basically the whole image – or even when they’re just very large – it can become quite difficult. All the pieces are basically just the background color, and the color of the letter. And there were only four colors in this image, each color was used multiple times for their own set of words. It was quite the challenge.

The easiest part of this assembly was the sorting. I just had one tray for each color, and one container for any pieces that were only the background. I worked on one color at a time. Sometimes the font used for one quote was simple to find, but much of the time it wasn’t as easy to pick out the right pieces for a certain quote.

Because it was so tall and thin (13 x 37 in.), it was easy to push to the back of the board when I wanted a break from it – and that is exactly what I did. When I felt myself getting too frustrated I stopped and worked on something else. 😎

My fellow P.A.D.S. sufferer Penny sent me this several years ago, but I was never in the right frame of mind to work on it. I never have my puzzles in any order to be assembled, my brain has to be in the right “head space” to work on an image; so the puzzle I’m doing next has to speak to me in some way. This puzzle has previously never had much to say – except, “Put me back, you don’t want any of this today.”

Miss Penny has since been informed that she wasn’t getting this puzzle back – after all the work that went into this one I’ve glued the bleeping thing and will be hanging it in the puzzle room. I love the look of it, and couldn’t bear to disassemble it after all that effort!

African Afternoon

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

African Afternoon by Gerold Como – Ravensburger – 100 pieces

I do so love when a thrift store puzzle is not only from a company with really great quality, but it is also complete. And if it’s a kids puzzle – even better. I can “check” it to be sure all the pieces are present, and then send it on to a child or school where it’ll be used and loved like puzzles are supposed to be.

This isn’t a scene I would choose to puzzle in a larger piece count, it just isn’t my pile of pieces (or cup of tea as it were). But with only 100 pieces the muted colors and subject matter weren’t a problem to deal with. As an added bonus, once it’s been assembled and if it’s all there my “grandson” gets to have it. He’s gonna love this one.😀

This little guy with his parents is just too adorable for words. I love that brush cut he’s got going on!

I can relate to this cat, the African plains are just too hot. It’s better to spend the day lounging around in a tree. And, if some unsuspecting prey wanders underneath and makes themselves available to jump down onto – even better. 🐆