This cute kids puzzle is adorable to look at, but had disappointing quality. Puzzles are so good for the brain development of children, I wish all the makers of puzzles for kids put the effort in to making great quality puzzles for them.
The image itself reminds me of Birthday Owls that I assembled last year. The artwork is very similar, but that puzzle had better quality than this one. The collage-type image is an easy one to assemble, and is great for helping gain confidence when assembling a puzzle with a larger piece count.
Mega Puzzles have hit or miss quality from my experience, this one was a miss. You can see below that the pieces don’t lie flat because they’re on the thin side and easily bent.
Although the quality wasn’t the best it was still a fun little puzzle to put together. I do love a collage!
Old World Map Calendar – Buffalo Games – 520 (+160) pieces
This puzzle is a very interesting concept; it’s a calendar within a puzzle, and you are supposed to be able to reassemble it every month. Cool idea, but not at all practical in my opinion.
I like vintage map puzzles, I find they can be intimidating and tough to put together, but I love the look of them and enjoy the challenge. This map was no exception, with beautiful colors and an interesting background.
The fit is extremely tight so that you can hang the finished puzzle with no glue or taping needed to keep it together. There are basically only 2 different shapes of pieces; this is so all the pieces can be interchangeable when you need to reconfigure the calendar each month. This is where the it becomes impractical; any puzzle made from cardboard isn’t going to be able to withstand multiple disassembling and reassembling – especially when the fit is so tight.
You can see below that the tabs are lifting and the image is coming off, and in some places the image is actually torn off. Perhaps a plastic puzzle would be a better way to go with this idea. With cardboard, no matter how sturdy it is, it will start to come apart after many assemblies.
I assembled it for this month, June. The 10th is a family birthday, the 17th is Father’s Day, and the full moon this month is on the 28th. The extra 160 pieces are for the major holidays, and extra days and spaces.
It was fun to put this together, and while I like the idea and the finished puzzle it just isn’t at all reasonable for a cardboard puzzle. Still it was an excellent thrift store find and I’m glad it was all there and I was able to try it out.
Seeing Double by John Speirs – Great American Puzzle Factory – 100 pieces
This is an interesting kid’s puzzle with a twist, you’re seeing double as one side of the attic looks like a mirror image of the other. But there are 14 differences between the two sides. Your job is to assemble the puzzle and then find what’s different.
The quality of this puzzle is very good. The pieces are a nice thickness and they fit together very well with a good variety of piece shapes. The image reproduction is good, but the finish is slightly shiny which caused a bit of glare and made working the top portion of the puzzle difficult under artificial lights.
This puzzle seems like it’s a bit old, but I wasn’t able to find any information about it online. Great American Puzzle Factory does have a series of these “puzzles within a puzzle”; some finding hidden images or like this one, finding differences.
My brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders when I put this one together, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to find all the differences on my own. I did find one of them right away, while assembling the edge, it’s right underneath the wording….
There’s a mustache on the man on the left, but not on the mirror image on the right. Basically it’s really the only difference I was able to find on my own, for the rest I just used the answer sheet.
It was a little difficult for a children’s puzzle, the top was quite dark which made it harder to see and put together. I think it’s a good thing when kids puzzles are a little challenging though, if they’re too easy they can become boring. The missing piece was a bummer, but it was still a good quality puzzle and a fun assembly.
This was a quick, fun puzzle that I put together one afternoon when I needed a puzzle fix in between larger piece count puzzles. It’s part of Ceaco’s Home Sweet Home series by artist Roger Nannini. I found I enjoyed the artwork very much!
Ceaco puzzles aren’t my favorite brand, but to be honest my opinion of them has gone up quite a bit after working with a brand that was much, much worse. Of the 25 puzzles I have assembled this month from 14 different brands, the Ceaco puzzles have been the best fitting of all of them. Shocked? Me too!
It’s interesting to me how a much lesser quality puzzle boosted my impression of Ceaco. Perhaps it just caused me to re-assess what I would and would not put up with in a puzzle. The fit is amazingly important to me – too loose is extremely annoying and frustrating. Too tight is the same way; if it takes upper body strength to smash the pieces together I always second guess if the pieces actually fit together (and it hurts my thumb!)
The pieces are on the thin side, with a good variety of piece shapes – made from multi-layered board that tends to split easily – but the fit is excellent. The image reproduction is good, with beautiful colors and crisp lines. This puzzle has been assembled many times, there is documentation on the side indicating each time it was put together. From what I’m reading it’s been put together at least 11 times before me. You can see in the picture above that many of the pieces were either split or bent and the finished puzzle didn’t lie flat. I don’t feel I can comment negatively on the quality of this specific puzzle if it’s been assembled so many times; I have no idea what it was like when it was new. That said, I actually think it’s held up well.
I enjoyed this puzzle very much, the artwork was interesting and made for a great afternoon of puzzling. I suppose I have more puzzles to choose from now that I’ve re-thought my stance on Ceaco. 😏
Things have been crazy this year and I didn’t have a puzzle ready for Mother’s Day. I decided yesterday to try and find a great picture of her and use the Ji Ga Zo program and put together a puzzle of my mom. It isn’t perfect, but I like it, and what better puzzle to show than that of one of my favorite people in the world?
This is my mother’s graduation picture from 1965. Wasn’t she a dish? Hot stuff!
My gorgeous momma!
I used this picture in Ji Ga Zo to make a mosaic puzzle of her. If you’d like to know more about the program and how it works, click the link to see my original post about this puzzle game. It took a while to get the picture cropped properly and the contrast right, but she’s worth it. 😎 I wasn’t able to get it all assembled at once, but finished the mosaic this morning. Here she is….
I like to show both pictures together so you can see how close you can actually get with just sepia tones. It isn’t an exact reproduction, but it’s pretty darn close and very entertaining to assemble. It gets better the farther away you are, if you step back from the computer (or hold your phone farther away) it becomes more “clear”. It’s a fun puzzle/game, and mom and I love playing with it and seeing which pictures would make the best puzzles. I think we may be working together to use dad’s graduation picture for a Father’s Day post this year!
My gorgeous momma!
Ji Ga Zo – 300 pieces
My mom is one of the best people I know. She’s flawed, like all of the rest of us; but she’s also kind and loving, smart and well-spoken, funny and silly, open and honest, empathetic and forgiving, and my very best friend. It seems cliche to say that, so many people do – but she truly is. When I’m hormonal and hating the world she’s the only one I want to talk to. When I’m depressed and anxious, she can make me smile and forget my troubles if only for a little while. When I’m tired and getting stupid silly she laughs with me and understands my ridiculous jokes and comments. When I worry about everything (and nothing) she’s always there to listen and just let me know she cares.
She’s also my puzzle dealer, and my favorite person to assemble puzzles with. We have almost a shorthand and work together extremely well. We tease each other, cuss at each other, and give high fives when one of us completes a section or finds that wayward piece. She’s my puzzle posse! Probably 90-95% of the puzzles we assemble come from her thrift store shopping, and as much as it annoys my dad to wade through the piles of puzzles, he knows how happy it makes me and mom and he puts up with it. Most of the time. (He’s pretty damn cool too!)
Being her daughter makes me very proud, and being her friend makes my life better. Happy Mother’s Day mom – I love you to puzzle pieces! ❤
