500 piece ‘Tropical Seaworld’ by MB Puzzle, premium blue board. Art by Adrian Chesterman. Fun and quick little puzzle, with lovely artwork!
Tag: MB Puzzle
Puzzling Updates!
I’ve been hard at work on this beautiful Cobble Hill puzzle- it’s my first time working this brand, and I’m very, very pleased with the quality! Nice board, lovely clear and crisp printing, and the cut is perfect and clean. Very little dust too!
It’s a toughie though! All the ‘easy’ parts (which was really only the owls) are done, and now all that’s left is the slow work of assembling all the foliage. It’s been fun, but slow and challenging. I’ve worked on it a lot in the mornings, with a cup of iced coffee, and my two cats meandering around me and the table.
Of course, that’s not all I’ve been doing! We had to cancel our cable plan this last week, so I’d spent some time puzzling a few PuzzleBugs in the livingroom, and watching through the last of my DVR’ed shows before they disappeared. Such fun! The fish will be glued and hung above my aquariums.
I also finished up my current ‘desk puzzle’, a very nice vintage Croxley. I like the image, and had a lot of fun assembling it, but this was the first one I was actually disappointed in the quality. The pieces fit VERY loosely, and the whole thing had an unpleasant shimmy and shake because of it. Almost as if the cutting blade was much wide than it should have been maybe? It’s the only one of the four Croxley’s I’ve done so far that has had be craftsmanship though, so hopefully it will only be an occasional one-off problem! It was bought second had too, so who knows how many times it’s been assembled in the last 20+ years! That could have something to do with it.
Hopefully this week I’ll make some more progress on this bad boy though! I can’t wait to see it done! I think I may frame this one!
Thatched Eaves Cottage
Finished one of my thrift store finds today, a little 500 piece I’ve been doing on the end of my desk. It’s been the perfect break from computing; just spin around in my chair, flip on the lamp, and a-puzzling I will go!
I wish I’d taken progress shots, as this one was essentially completed in bands going down. The strip of sky, strip of roof, strip of white walls, strip of grass…. Right down to the flowers! So happy this one was also 100% complete and in very good condition! It’ll be a fun one to do again at some point.
“Fruit and Flowers” Done!
All done (A few days ago, in fact)! Very fun puzzle! I didn’t find the quality to be quite as nice on this one as I have the other ‘premium blue board’ MB’s. The pieces fit together nicely but were quite loose, which made moving smaller assembled sections a pain. I even had a few mishaps of moving a sorting tray or box and bumping the assembled pieces, leading to a frustrating bit of time ‘fixing’ the assembled bits.
In fact, I’d kicked around whether I wanted to glue this one or not…I’d finally decided that I would in fact glue it to hang in our living room, but trying to slide it onto the poster board for transfer from my puzzle board was a nightmare. Everything was so loose, the pieces were constantly catching on the edges of the poster board and coming apart, something I hadn’t experienced with the other MB’s I’d done at all. I finally decided that maybe I didn’t want to glue it after all, and reboxed it instead. Probably for the better, it was a fun puzzle to assemble, and I think my mum would enjoy doing it anyway!
All around, still very happy with this one, and very glad to have gotten it and had fun putting it together! It was a nice challenge!
“Fruit and Flowers” Progress
Started this lovely 1000 piece by MB puzzle just after reboxing my last. It’s one I started at the end of last year, got partway through the border, and decided better of. It just wasn’t time then! I’ve been having a lot of fun with it now, and it’s pleasingly challenging after the last few that have been fairly quick. I’ve been working this one for a little while now.
At first I thought it was going to be easy, all the fruits stood out so much, but that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. I think at such a large scale, figuring out where pieces went was a lot more difficult than I expected- I pulled out all the blueberries to try first, made very little progress, and had to move onto something different instead!
I woke up early (for me at least) today, and with hubby still snoozing, decided to fix myself a jalapeno cheddar bagel, a glass of iced coffee and sit and work some more! I watched my spook shows while I worked (what I call all the paranormal shows I like to DVR to watch while puzzling) and made some good, solid progress!
Talk about a nice way to spend the morning!
Near Berchtesgaden…
Another older MB Croxley puzzle, this time from 1991. Absolutely lovely, and a 100% complete thrift store find!
Simply loving these oldies. Really nice quality, with wonderfully thick pieces. I did repair a few where some of the image was pulling off with the dab of a glue stick. Glad I can give them a loving home!
Catching Up!
Hello hello! It’s been a bit since I posted- getting over the flu and trying to catch up on the housework is rough! Everything was, and still is partially at least, a wreck! D: I’ve alos been to the doctor today for an ear infection I picked up while I was sick, so that’s fun. But I’m still puzzling!
I finished this beautiful 500 piece MB Puzzle Croxley image, no name that I can find. 100% complete, which is always lovely from a thriftstore find!
After that I decided to start this Ravensburger…. Mostly because it’s a Ravensburger and is super nice quality. I’ve wanted to get it done so I can trade it away for something I like more!
I just was NOT digging the image though, not at all. Someone had mentioned that they did the same image as a 500 piece, and did not enjoy it all, so that put me even more off it! I decided to pack it back and put it straight into my trade/sell bin! Too many puzzles to do to waste time on ones I won’t enjoy, even if they are fantastic quality!
I decided instead to break out this panoramic 750 piece by MB Puzzle, “Big World”. I’d been looking forward to doing it quite a bit, he image son the box is phenomenal. While I was doing it however, and getting a more close up view of the art, I discovered its the sort of digital art I’m not as fond of, where everything is vaguely plasticky looking. I still love the image, but decided to pack it up and be done with it when it was complete! It also went into to my trade box!
And last but not least, I stopped into a Goodwill in a town nearby, and boy am I glad I did! Came away with all of these vintage lovelies for around ten bucks!
Color me excited! All of them are in excellent condition, and appear to be complete! They’re gonna be a blast to put together, and my are also my mum’s favorite variety of puzzle because they’re the sort she grew up on, so I’ll be loaning them off to her to puzzle out as well! Win-Win! 😀
Thanks for puzzling with me today!
Puzzled Pickle 