Tag: Thrift Store Puzzle

Glorious Morning

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

Glorious Morning by Jane Maday – E&L Corp. – 250 pieces

This beautiful image is unfortunately attached to a puzzle of very poor quality – but I enjoyed assembling it anyways. Things don’t always have to be perfect; in fact, if they were things would get boring pretty quickly.

It’s been a while since I’ve done an E&L puzzle, and the quality of this one reminded me why that was. Thin pieces, sloppy fit, and shiny finish – these are puzzles I usually pass right on by. It was a thrift store puzzle given to me by a friend though, which is why I wanted to assemble it.

It was such a small puzzle (14 x 10 inches) that I just put all the pieces on the board. I tried to just put them wherever, but the OCD kicked in and I ended up laying them out neatly in rows – couldn’t help myself! 🤷‍♀️

I started with the four birds and then started filling in the birdhouses and flowers. It wasn’t an easy puzzle, but was still fun. The missing piece was a little disappointing, but it’s par for the course sometimes. Thrift store puzzles come with a bit of risk, but usually the ones I find are complete. When they’re not, it isn’t too much of a problem; the task is to put together all the pieces you have, and I completed my task.

I’ve done quite a few puzzles with artwork by Jane Maday; they’re usually outdoors with birds and flowers and they’re always entertaining to put together. Despite the quality issues it was still fun – in fact I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would. 🐦❤

American Girl – Molly

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

American Girl – Molly – Mattel – 150 pieces

This set of three puzzles was quick and entertaining to assemble, but unfortunately one of them was missing a piece. That’s the chance you take when you purchase thrift store puzzles, but honestly I would say somewhere around 97% of all my pre-loved puzzles are complete. When there is a missing piece or two it isn’t too much of an issue for me; I still got a great deal for my money.

There were two American Girl puzzle sets at the thrift store, and this is the second set that I’ve assembled. The first one, Josefina, was put together in March of last year. That one was complete, and honestly was a little bit better in the quality department than this one.

The fit was much looser with this set, which made the assembly a bit frustrating. The finish is extremely shiny which is a problem under artificial lights, but the image reproduction was otherwise quite good. There were a nice variety of piece shapes, and the chipboard is thin but sturdy.

This was my favorite of the three images, and I wanted to put it into the frame, but the looseness of the fit caused it to crumble when I tried to put it in the tray. I was too frustrated to re-assemble it just for another picture. Sorry…sort of.

Normally the image with a dog would be the one I’m drawn to, but for some reason I cannot verbalize this was my least favorite of the three.

A missing piece. A bit of a disappointment, but I finished the puzzle by putting together all the pieces I had – so mission complete!

The set of three puzzles comes with one frame, so it seems that you display whichever one you like best, or you can rotate the puzzles.

If you’re lucky enough to find one of these sets at a thrift store or online and you’ve got a youngster who enjoys the American Girl dolls and books, they would be a nice gift. The quality is fair/good. It was nice to give them a try, and I enjoyed them very much.

Garden Study of the Vickers Children

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

Garden Study of the Vickers Children by John Singer Sargent – Laurel Ink – 500 pieces

Fine Art puzzle images aren’t usually my thing, but there was something about this one that I couldn’t resist; there’s something about the faces of the children but I’m not sure I could articulate what that is. Not only is the artwork striking, but the puzzle is from a company I hadn’t heard of before – the added excitement of trying out a new brand!

The quality of this puzzle was good/very good. The chipboard is a good thickness and there are an excellent variety of piece shapes. The fit is very good, as is the image reproduction; the finish was somewhat shiny which did cause me a few problems, but it wasn’t too bad. My only quality concern was quite a few pieces still attached.

Whoever assembled this puzzle before didn’t separate all the pieces; so there were probably about 40 or more with two pieces attached, and some with more than three or four pieces still connected together. Separating the pieces caused little bits of cardboard to stick up at the corners of the pieces, and in some places it shows in the finished image. Overall though, it was a good quality puzzle which made me very happy.

The entire back of the box was dedicated to a small biography of the painter, John Singer Sargent. It was an interesting read, and I enjoyed both learning about him and his work and assembling the puzzle.

I really did well on my last trip to the thrift store. I found both this one and the 65 year old Tuco; Mom would be proud. 💖

Tea Time Terrors

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

Tea Time Terrors by Steve Crisp – Hua Cao Shu Mu – 300 pieces

This is a very cute image (especially if you’re a cat person), but unfortunately it was attached to a puzzle of pretty poor quality. This is another of my thrift store purchases, and I was excited to try a new brand – I’m sorry to say it wasn’t good at all.

Hua Cao Shu Mu is a new company to me, and I don’t know how long they’ve been in business. Perhaps they’re a company that popped up during the pandemic to take advantage of the run on jigsaw puzzles. The puzzles are made in China, and unfortunately the quality left a lot to be desired in my opinion. All the pieces were almost exactly the same shape and there were false fits everywhere – one of my pet peeves. The image reproduction was quite fuzzy in some places and the finish was extremely shiny. It comes with a poster that was exactly as big as the assembled puzzle – perhaps that would be good for older puzzlers with eyesight issues. The chipboard was thin, but sturdy, and had the “sharp” white backing that I am not fond of. In addition, the back was lettered from A to F, to assist in sorting and/or assembling the image.

I’ve done a puzzle before that had printing on the back to help with assembly – an image of Noah’s Ark by Eric Dowdle that was a “Jigsaw Puzzle for Dummies”. That one was more designed to help you put it together piece by piece, this puzzle seems to have the letters to assist in sorting more than actual assembly.

Wanting to get a sense of it I did sort out all the “A” pieces and then put them together. It’s fine if it helps you enjoy your puzzles, but it really isn’t for me. I put together the rest of the puzzle as I normally do without regard to the letters on the back. (It could be helpful though, especially with this brand and all the false fits that this puzzle has to offer.)

This came in a box with three separate cat/window puzzles, I think they may all be by Steve Crisp but haven’t done too much googling to be certain. There is no mention of the artist anywhere in or on the box or poster, I had to look it up myself – which makes me question whether or not this image was actually licensed to this company.

There’s been quite a bit of theft from artists in the past few years, and with the run on puzzles during the pandemic and new companies jumping into the market…well, you know what I’m saying. I have no proof that’s what went on here, but I’m skeptical about whether or not these images were actually sold to this company.

As usual when working with a new brand I was hoping for a great quality puzzle, but was quite disappointed in this one; it was nowhere near as good as I’d hoped for. At some point I’ll get to the other two puzzles in this box, but at the moment I’m just not feelin’ it. 😢

Tranquil Waters

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

Tranquil Waters – Tuco – 408 pieces

This puzzle was quite the fantastic thrift store find, and I’m amazed that a 65 year old puzzle in the original box was still complete! I had a great time assembling it even though the subject matter wasn’t the usual type of image that I like to puzzle.

You can see in the image above that most of the pieces have at least one wavy side that just sits next to adjacent pieces, that’s the Tuco cut that I have seen in the past; but this puzzle says on the box that it is 100% interlocking, so every piece also interlocks with at least one other piece as well.

The quality was excellent and I was very impressed with this puzzle. The chipboard used is described on the box as wood-like pieces made from Upson Laminated wood fibre board. In my post about this puzzle in progress I showed the thickness of the pieces against current premium puzzle brands Ravensburger and Pomegranate…

That’s a Ravensburger on the left, and Pomegranate on the right. Their pieces seem ridiculously thin compared to this Tuco puzzle, don’t they?

I also wanted to show the thickness compared to wooden puzzle brands. Starting from the left these are pieces from Liberty, Artifact, Wentworth, and the cardboard Tuco. They’re all very close to the same thickness!

I’m so glad I had the opportunity to find and assemble this amazing puzzle. It was quite a challenging assembly for only having 400+ pieces, the painterly style made it difficult at times; but I enjoyed it very very much, and will be sending it on to Penny so she can have the opportunity to try it out as well.