Fishing, Sailing and Catching Frogs by Bonnie White – MasterPieces – 500 pieces
I really enjoy an Americana image now and then, and this was no different. I’ve done several puzzles with Bonnie White’s artwork, and I find them to be charming, detailed, and completely entertaining.
The pieces looked pretty much all green as I got started, and it looked as though it was going to be difficult. But as I went along and got more used to the image and what went where, the pieces made more sense. I could see that this green went with the apple tree, and that green went with the fields, etc.
I truly enjoyed this image, and it was quicker to go together than I thought it would be. Even with the hundreds, perhaps thousands of puzzles I’ve put together – I am still wrong a LOT of the time about whether or not I will enjoy a certain image and how difficult it will be. 🤷♀️
Fishing….
I thought I’d show you what the title means. Fishing in the stream….
Sailing….
The boys are sailing their boats in the creek…
Catching frogs!
And catching frogs. I love this little guy! I was quite a tomboy when I was younger and I don’t want to brag, but I caught quite a few frogs in my day. 🐸
Cake Shed was quite a challenge, but I got it done! It’s a beautiful, bright image and I truly enjoyed every part of the assembly. 2000 piece puzzles always seem a bit daunting when I’m sorting them; but once the assembling starts I wind up having a really good time. And when it’s finished I always end up quite proud of my accomplishment.
This was a great quality thrift store puzzle; although it does show the chances one takes when purchasing puzzles secondhand. It was missing one piece and had an extra piece from a completely different puzzle in the box. Even so, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the assembly and I still consider it money well spent. $1.99 for a 2000 piece puzzle that gave me hours and hours of quiet, meditative, and entertaining fun. Where else can you get that much bang for your buck?
Buffalo puzzles have excellent quality, and I’ve been doing more of them lately. Mom bought quite a few of their puzzles at the thrift stores, and I’m working through them as quickly as I can. The pieces are a good thickness with a nice variety of shapes, they fit together well and have beautiful image reproduction. I’ve assembled their puzzles in sizes from 300 to 2000 pieces, and in my opinion they have excellent quality throughout every size.
This cake looks delicious!
This was the first thing I assembled, a delicious looking fruit-covered cake. Yum! The bright red ribbon and the fruit were easy to find, and I almost collected every piece for this small section on the first try. That in itself is amazing!
A birthday cake for a cat? We love our Buddy, and even though we give up room on our bed and lots of belly rubs and back scratches, we wouldn’t pay someone to make him a cake for his birthday. We just wouldn’t – although if you do something like that for your pets I am not denigrating that in any way. Buddy may get an extra treat on his special day (if I can remember what day that is), but that’s about it.
I love this little big guy, he looks like he makes a mean cake! The artwork by Steve Read was both adorable and beautiful, and it makes me want to find more puzzles with his images. The colors were lovely, and the image as a whole made for a great puzzle.
If you can find this one out there, it is definitely recommended. I loved every moment of it – even assembling the floor and walls. It’s a great image for puzzling, and is excellent quality. I give it two servings way up! 🍴🍰🍴🍰
Quilting Country by Eric Dowdle – MasterPieces – 1000 pieces
When looking for the next puzzle to assemble, I found this little gem hiding in the back row of one of my shelves. It’s a thrift store puzzle that mom bought for us sometime last year. After assembling Quilt Blocks earlier this month, I was so pleased to find another quilt puzzle here ready for me to get going on it.
Most of the time I find that Eric Dowdle’s artwork makes for difficult puzzles, and this one is no different. It’s a bit challenging, but what else do I have to do with my time these days? A difficult assembly keeps me intensely focused on what I’m doing; and with that intense focus comes an almost meditative state where the next piece, a certain shape, or that one color is all I’m thinking about.
Jigsaw puzzles give me a welcome respite from thinking and worrying, which I seem to be doing a lot of these days. Each puzzle waiting to be assembled is hours and hours of down time for my brain – best hobby ever!
This was a gorgeous puzzle that sadly was over too soon. The picture doesn’t do it justice, the colors are spectacular! Great quality thrift store puzzle that makes my heart and eyes very happy.
This was another puzzle where I wasn’t aware of the artist until I was finished and writing up the post – it’s Ciro Marchetti. He’s another digital artist whose work I greatly admire, and this one definitely didn’t disappoint. The colors are AMAZING!
Buffalo has to be given some props here for their exceptional image reproduction in addition to the great quality of the pieces and the fit. This puzzle is an example of one of the reasons why I love thrift store shopping. You can find a puzzle like this, of fantastic quality, for a small fraction of what you would pay retail. Yes, sometimes you run the risk of missing pieces, but it’s worth it in my book. Even a puzzle with missing pieces can be entertaining to assemble – at least it is for me. As my friend Nicola says, “The job is to put all the pieces together until there aren’t any more”. You can complete that task even with an incomplete puzzle. 🙂
The colors of the flowers and stained glass were just beautiful. I did not manipulate this image other than to crop it, these are the true colors!
The red and yellow birds were the first ones I put together, one bird led to another and before I knew it the puzzle was complete. I think this image would be excellent in a larger piece count, it was just too much fun to be over so quickly.
The colors, the puzzle, the quality – just fabulous!
While I have chosen the next puzzle, I haven’t gotten any work done on it yet – it’s still mostly in the box – it’s almost in progress. 😉
I have sorted a bit of it, but it’s 2000 pieces so it takes a little longer to get through them all. I think it’s going to be really fun once I get going though, I just have to get through my least favorite part, the sorting. Hopefully I’ll have time today to at least finish sorting and get ready for some actual assembly.
