My puzzle board is finally empty, and I’m once again able to work on bigger puzzles. There are several 1000 piece puzzles I’ve got in the to do pile that are larger than the average size and need my bigger board.
The board has been occupied by the Mystery Puzzle for a couple of months, and we were finally able to take it off and find a safe place to store it until we decide what we’re going to do with it. I’m looking forward to sitting at my big board again to puzzle!
Today I’m starting American Diner by White Mountain – bright colors and a great image by Steve Crisp – here’s hoping it’s going to be as entertaining as it looks!
The Old Candy Shop by Steve Crisp – White Mountain – 300 pieces
This puzzle is a great example of why you need to see the puzzle box close up and the puzzle assembled. I’ve seen this image many times before and thought only “Eh, it’s okay I guess” , but it was much more detailed and fun to assemble than I’d imagined. What an excellent puzzle!
This is one of the lot of puzzles I got from my Facebook Marketplace purchase and I wasn’t overly excited about assembling it – and boy was I wrong. It’s so interesting to me how I still cannot tell what puzzles I’ll enjoy and what puzzles I won’t. I’ve assembled a LOT of puzzles, I work on them every single day if I’m able, but still they constantly surprise me!
The quality was very good, this was the first 300 piece White Mountain that I’ve done. You can see in the above picture that the piece shape isn’t obvious and it almost looks like a picture. The fit was wonderful and the large pieces were very easy to work with. They had the typical WM shapes and thickness. The image reproduction is absolutely gorgeous….
The detail is amazing, and look how wonderfully grandma’s face is captured; it’s a gorgeous image, and was thoroughly entertaining to assemble! I haven’t done many Steve Read puzzles, but I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more of his work. I absolutely adored this one!
Movie Posters by Lewis T. Johnson – White Mountain – 1000 pieces
My son and I assembled this in just about 2.5 hours on New Year’s Eve! That’s what happens when you assemble a puzzle with someone who is LASER FOCUSED on the task at hand. (If you were wondering, the laser focus wasn’t me; I kept getting distrac….. oooh! Look! Something shiny!)
This beauty is already glued and ready for framing to hang in his room. Best of all, we had a great time assembling it and when we were done he put on his copy of It Happened One Night and we watched it together. I have the best kids.💝
There were 2 different movies that each had 2 posters in the puzzle – one of them was Casablanca, and the other was It Happened One Night. I wonder why they got double billing:
Of the 38 posters (from 36 movies) astonishingly I’ve only seen 2 of them! Gone With the Wind, and It Happened One Night. I know, I know. How can I not have seen Casablanca? Honestly, not interested in seeing it. 🤨
My son’s favorite of the movies shown is North by Northwest…
Talk about great image reproduction, you can even read those tiny little words. Wow. Fantastically fun puzzle!
Penny Candy by Lois B. Sutton – White Mountain – 550 pieces
It’s one day before the best candy holiday there is, so it’s the perfect time for this lovely puzzle of Penny Candy! The bright colors and fun candies made for an excellent image that was such an entertaining assembly, I absolutely loved it!
I decided to try laying out all the pieces on my board – a completely different method than the one I normally use – to see if perhaps it was easier or more efficient for me. And since I was doing something new, I also decided to document my progress for the blog, taking pictures along the way. It’s interesting sometimes to watch how a puzzle comes together, at least I hope it is. 😉
Many people use this method when puzzling, so I decided to try it to see if it was better for me. There are some pros, some cons; it was easier at times to find the piece I was looking for, but it made my slight OCD go a bit crazy! I wanted to line up all the pieces into neat little rows. I’m not sure it’s a method I’ll use again, but it was fun (sort of) to give it a try.
These sections were the ones I pulled out to start on first when laying all the pieces on the board; I did pretty well and got most of the pieces on the first try!
Everything’s starting to come together, and I’m becoming more familiar with the colors and patterns so it’s a bit easier to find those stray pieces I didn’t pull the first time. I’m loving the look of the image!
This is how the puzzle looked just before my Puzzle Posse arrived to help finish it off. It won’t be long now!
Mom’s here and helping to fill in all the blank spaces. I’m a good daughter and let her have the comfy chair right in front of the puzzle. You can see there aren’t very many pieces left to go now; with her help we finished up in no time and enjoyed every piece. How cute is my posse? So cute!
There were some VERY old fashioned ads and candy that you would absolutely never see these days…
Candy is quick energy for active bodies, put some in their lunch every day. Yowza. That definitely wouldn’t fly into today’s kale infused atmosphere, would it? And candy is delicious food, eat some every day? Oh my! Not that I dislike candy, I definitely enjoy it very much. But food? Yikes. And you wouldn’t see that syrup six shooter in any candy store today! Not only is it a gun, but it’s made out of syrup? Ew! 🤢
I’m old enough to remember penny candy; there used to be a “General Store” in my hometown with a candy counter full of penny candy. The eternally patient clerks would grab a very small brown paper bag and fill it with the candies we chose – adding up the price as we went, making sure we knew how much we were spending.
I have wonderful memories of going into town and getting 50 cents or a dollar from my parents and picking out all the different candies. My favorites were the dots on paper strips, tootsie rolls, pixie sticks, and rock candy. And I’m a child of the 70’s and 80’s, so of course we enjoyed out share of pop rocks and cosmic candy! Good times. 🍫🍬🍭
Penny Candy had me reminiscing, and I enjoyed both the memories and the puzzle!
Bookmarks by Charlie Girard – White Mountain – 1000 pieces
Even though this puzzle was missing a piece it, it was still great fun. Each bookmark was entertaining to put together, and it made for an excellent all around puzzle.
I didn’t use the image on the box to help me with the assembly – so only shape, color, and patterns were used to solve it. I sometimes enjoy challenging myself by putting the box away and solving the puzzle with no help from the image at all. I don’t always know which puzzle is going to lead me to attempt it without the image; usually it’s the more difficult ones, but sometimes it’s fun collages like this one.
Charlie Girard puts together some amazing images that make for wonderfully fun puzzles, that’s why he’s one of my favorite puzzle artists. His collages make me so happy! I’ve done many of his collages, but there are still many more I’d love to get my hands on. 🙂
These are some of my favorite bookmarks from this puzzle…
I wonder what my choice of these 3 bookmarks says about me. Thoughts? 😉
My Jigsaw Journal 