Tag: Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles

Interior

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

Interior by William Ireland – Liberty Puzzles – 527 pieces

This puzzle was so much fun! Usually painterly images like this aren’t my pile of pieces, and perhaps with a cardboard puzzle this wouldn’t have been as entertaining, but put that artwork on top of a Liberty Puzzle and I am all over it!

It’s my first time with artwork by William Ireland, and there’s something about his art that draws me in. There must be something about it, because normally I would never choose something like this for puzzling. I’m not sure if it’s his use of color or perhaps the symmetry – something made me stop when I saw this, and kept me thinking about it long enough to decide to order it.

The whimsies were gorgeous, of course they were. They always are, and as usual I didn’t find all of them when the pieces were laid out on trays.

There were several multipiece whimsies, the grandfather clock and birdcage for example, that I was able to find and assemble, but also several of them I wasn’t able to get them all on my first look through all the pieces. Opening up a Liberty Puzzle for the first time and finding all the wonderful shapes and whimsies is almost a magical experience for me. Mom and I used to spend so much time on that first look-through, it’s special; we never took it for granted and I try not to get jaded and remember how much fun there is in just looking at the pieces and seeing what the designers came up with.

There’s so much to see from the back, and thankfully I got an excellent image of it. Even now, just as I am writing this up I found something that I hadn’t noticed before – what looks like a fishbowl has smoke coming out of it leading up to the beautiful fish shape. How did I miss that before?

This really was an enjoyable assembly, and I consciously tried to make it last as long as I could. I forgot though that my son has gotten more and more interested in puzzling, and goes into the puzzle room when I’m not there to work on them. When I got up this morning the puzzle was almost entirely finished, even though last night there was almost a whole tray of pieces left to put in. Oh dear. He’s getting better at it and doing much more than he used to – it makes me so happy!

Dobby the House Elf

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles8 Comments

Dobby the House Elf – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 250 pieces

I mean, come on! Is this not an adorable image? If you’re not a Harry Potter fan you probably wouldn’t think so, but as someone who has read every book and seen each of the movies I find this image to be so friggin’ cute! I had such a good time with this assembly that honestly I’d love to take it apart and start all over again right this minute.

To be honest, I was worried when I bought all these Harry Potter puzzles (remember that sale – 70% off?) that perhaps the whimsies would be the same for every puzzle. Happily that doesn’t seem to be the case at all, so far I’ve done three of the nine puzzles purchased and they have been puzzle specific whimsies for each one. The whimsies for this puzzle made me so happy, just look at all those Dobbys!

There were so many socks, almost in every picture in the image. If you read the books or have seen the movies you know, when Dobby got a sock from his master he was freed. “Master has given Dobby a sock. Master has presented Dobby with clothes. Dobby is free!”

This is where I tell you that I only did about half of this puzzle, my youngest son did the other half. I had to take a break and go rest, but my husband made me get out of bed and come look, because he was in the puzzle room all alone working on it for quite some time. It makes my heart happy that he’s really started to enjoy puzzling. He’s been doing more and more of it lately; never on his own, he only wants to help with the puzzles I’m doing – but it’s a start. Hopefully some day soon he’ll want to do one all by himself.

Such a great puzzle, I love the look of all the little Dobbys peeking out from the back of this image. So cute!

This puzzle made me so happy; the image, the fact that my son helped so much, the quality, the whimsies – everything was just right. This is one I’ll definitely be assembling again, probably very soon.

I even went back to the Wentworth website and checked on their Harry Potter puzzles, most of them were still on sale at the time and I was looking seriously at all the ones I didn’t purchase the first time thinking maybe it might be worth it to get the rest of them…I didn’t, but now I wish that I had. 😥

It’s National Jigsaw Day in the United Kingdom. I try to always post a puzzle from the UK (usually a Wentworth, since they founded this “holiday” back in 2015) and as luck would have it this was already the next puzzle in the queue. There are very few days out there that celebrate us Divine Discerning Dissectologists, so I try to always remember this one.

To all my puzzle posse and fellow P.A.D.S. sufferers out there I hope you can spend a little time with a jigsaw puzzle today; I’m going to try to spend the day enjoying a beautiful puzzle, and I hope you can too.

Spread the puzzle love my friends, this is OUR day – Happy Jigsaw Day! 🧩💚

Defence Against the Dark Arts

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Defence Against the Dark Arts – Wentworth Wooden Puzzles – 500 pieces

Is this not a fantastic image for the month of October? I think it is, so here we are. Honestly I wasn’t sure how this one was going to go for me, as there is a LOT of black in it even though it seems very colorful and I wasn’t sure how these aging eyes of mine would deal with all the darkness. Luckily with the help of some eyeglasses and an excellent light source it wasn’t too bad at all. 👓🕯

I cannot be held responsible for this puzzle purchase as every Harry Potter puzzle on the Wentworth website was 70% off back in June, and I was left unsupervised with access to my bank account. Consequently, of the fourteen puzzles that were available nine of them made it into my shopping cart. Getting a QUALITY 500 piece wooden puzzle for such a great price was just too good to pass up, so I didn’t! I bought many different sizes: two 500 pieces, a 450, a 225, a set of four 65 pieces, and several 250’s (which I consider to be the perfect size for a Wentworth). This is the second puzzle from this purchase that I’ve assembled, and it was an absolute joy.

If you read My Jigsaw Journal regularly you might remember this picture from the in progress post I did back in August when this puzzle was assembled. The whimsies in this puzzle are absolutely fabulous – with images of Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape, and even Crookshanks, Scabbers, and Hedwig,. I love all of these figures, and truly appreciate all the work that must have gone into them.

I’m not sure what it is that I love so much about this little section, I just know that it makes me happy even just to look at it. It was a lot of fun to put together and still makes me smile even as I’m typing this up. 😍

Normally I show the entire back of a wooden puzzle, especially when the shapes are Victorian cut or just interesting to me. The shapes for most of these pieces were “normal” and so even though I took a picture of the back I decided to only show you this little part of it. You couldn’t tell unless you were really paying attention, but Scabbers’ whiskers extend into two of the pieces next to him. I didn’t notice at all until I flipped it over. There are a few of these extensions into surrounding pieces for a couple of the other whimsies as well. It makes me really appreciate all the work that went into these puzzles, even more than I already did!

For some reason I just dumped out all the pieces onto my board and flipped them over with no sorting, not even the edges. It was chaos! As the assembly went on I realized that 500 pieces is a bit too many for me to puzzle that way. It’s ok with a smaller piece count, but for this stuck-in-her-ways old lady, I think anything over 300 pieces will need to be sorted from now on. Lesson learned.

Chaos not withstanding, this puzzle made me tremendously happy. Buying it made me happy. Looking at the box made me happy. Finding all the whimsy pieces made me happy. And assembling it made me very happy. 😄

Interior In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling8 Comments

Interior by William Ireland – Liberty Puzzles – 527 pieces

Currently this gorgeous Liberty puzzle is on my board and I am reveling in the fun of assembling it. There are so many little wonderful tableaus going on with the whimsy pieces, it’s so entertaining to watch them all come together. In the lower right corner you can find a couple dancing, the old Victrola is playing and musical notes are floating out.

You can also see an old grandfather clock sticking out of the bottom section, what a fantastic piece! If you can’t tell yet I am very much enjoying this puzzle. 😎

I absolutely love this multipiece whimsy: lying on the couch with lots of pillows, some comfy slippers, a good book, being kept company by furry friends – it’s so good! I haven’t worked my way to the section where it fits into the puzzle yet, which is why it’s got a white background; it’s still sitting on a tray waiting for placement. But it’s so cute that I can’t seem to stop staring at it, even though I’m not quite close to where it belongs in the image yet.

It’s been so enjoyable putting this one together that I am purposely drawing it out to get maximum entertainment from the assembly. I adore the image, and the puzzle itself is just as gorgeous. 😍

Peacock and Pattern

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles8 Comments

Peacock and Pattern by Jane Tattersfield – Liberty Puzzles – 508 pieces

Man did I have a good time with this one, but it went together exactly the opposite of what I’d planned. When I looked at the image on the box I thought to myself that the easiest way to assemble this would be to start with the peacock in the center and work my way outwards. But when I was laying out all the pieces the puzzle told me that my initial plan was NOT the way to go.

Most wooden puzzles aren’t ones that you can start with the edges, especially if they are Victorian cut or have crazily shaped pieces. This image has a small border on it though, and that made it the most logical place for me to begin. Instead of rigidly sticking to my mental plan of how things were going to go together I decided to shift and let the puzzle lead where it wanted to go. After assembling the border, it flowed quite naturally into the yellow patterns, and so on. I did put together the peacock’s body and head earlier on, but the rest of him wasn’t finished until the very end.

This puzzle was more difficult than I’d bargained for, they’ve upped the difficulty level of their piece cuts at Liberty if you ask me. There were many times that I thought I knew exactly why I was looking for, but I most certainly did not. There were tabs where you thought you just needed to find that correct shape, but actually you would end up with two different pieces whose ends joined together to make the shape you needed. It’s hard to describe with words, but it was a tricky cut that required a little extra brain power, and it reminded me a bit of the 100+ year-old Parker Bros. Pasttime puzzle that mom and I assembled together.

Forgive the cockeyed picture, my apologies. Sometimes you can’t really tell on your phone whether you’ve got it right – or maybe that’s just me. I should blame my age, but I’m extremely tired today so please insert your own joke about old ladies and failing eyesight here…

Now that the jokes are out of the way, don’t you just love to see the back of such a well designed puzzle? I know I do!

They had this sort of picture setup on the Liberty website, and I loved it so much I wanted to recreate it here. It was fiddly work getting certain pieces out of the way without disturbing others, but I think it ended up making for an excellent picture, don’t you?

So many absolutely beautiful whimsy pieces in this puzzle, and so many multipiece whimsies as well. Aren’t they gorgeous? I need to get my thesaurus out and find some new adjectives to tell you how amazing these puzzles are. Fabulous!