More Completes!

I’ve been slow to puzzle recently, and even slower to update! I’ve always got puzzles going, but have been too busy to sit down and get my blog posts written up. Whoops!

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“Balloons Over Cottage Cove” 2000 Piece MB Puzzle

I finished this one up back on the 7th of July; my first ‘real’ 2000 piece, and it was a total blast. Really fun to assemble, and the perfect balance between challenge, and making solid progress at every sitting.

The artist is Nicky Boehme; her art makes such bright and colorful puzzles. I’m always keen to snatch one up when I see it in the store.

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My husband was slightly horrified when he came in and discovered me reboxing it. He said for how long it took me to do (and it was on my board for about two months, I really worked it at a leisurely pace!) that he was certain I would glue it! Nope! This one’s going in the trade pile!

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‘Mickey and Minnie in Paris’ by Thomas Kinkade, 500 piece Ceaco
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“Fresh Fruit and Veggie Basket” 500 Piece PuzzleBug

Two more small completes, a Disney image from Thomas Kinkade- I just love the rainy scene. One of my desk puzzles, and I poked at it off and on for a few days. It’s been a while since I’d done a Ceaco; now I realize why people complain about them… I don’t think they’re bad, but I do with they had a thicker, hardier cardboard. Especially since they’re the same price (or nearly so) of the much nicer Buffalo brand!

The fruits and veggies was one I did and glued to hang in my kitchen- it’s glued, though not yet hung… I only did it because I had a number of other small puzzles to glue, and those are now happily in their place over the fish tanks, finally!

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And now for my latest complete, what filled my board after the veggies and the 200 piece:

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“Earth Angel” 1000 piece Buffalo, art by Josephine Wall

Hard to resist a Josephine Wall- such beautiful colors and stunning artwork!

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I chose to start with the wing, and honestly, I feel like it was the most challenging part. Very difficult to orient the pieces to each other when they’re just varying degrees of dark blue and black with small dots! Once that was done it was relatively smooth sailing!

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I’m always tempted to glue her puzzles, because I’d love to have the art on the walls… but they’re also really fun, so I’v decided to keep them in my collection instead. So back into the box it went this afternoon, and on to more puzzles for me!

Thrifty Completes

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‘Vegetarian Delights’  500 piece by Golden Guild

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One of the thrift shop finds I was most excited about, so I’m extra happy that it’s 100% complete! Not dated, sadly. Maybe 80’s or early 90’s?

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‘Murten Street Scene’ 500 piece Encore by Random House

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I love it when these thrift shop puzzles are complete, especially when they’re older ones. Makes me happy they were well cared for before they ended up with me, and now I can do the same.

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And here’s a little update on the 2000 piece I’ve been working at when I have the chance. Last week was SGDQ- a week long video games speed running marathon for charity, so I didn’t get much work into it during that time as I was watching! Really trying to push it now, but life is getting in the way. Ah well, puzzles are always there waitin’ on ya!

“Fruit and Flowers” Progress

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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!

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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!

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Talk about a nice way to spend the morning!

Peter Pan

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Shortly after finishing ‘Florabundance’, I decided to break out this gorgeous 1000 piece by Master Pieces, ‘Peter Pan’ by Steve Crisp. I spent a smidge of time that Thursday evening sorting out the edge pieces and assembling them, before calling it a day for puzzling!

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Look at all these NOT edge pieces…. and these were just some of them. I don’t mind irregular shaped pieces, but I can’t stand those that masquerade as edges! You can make irregular pieces without having those long flat sides, darnit!

Anyway, bright and early Friday morning, I set about sorting and assembling! And turns out, well… Peter Pan is a super easy puzzle.

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In no time at all, I’d sorted out all the individual bits, and the Pan himself was together. You see, the image is stunning as a whole, but everything in it is very individual and distinct. Big chunks of the puzzle, and whole characters, came together in a flash!

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Before I knew it, I was down to the last bits! I couldn’t believe how quickly it had come together!

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It’s all around a lovely image, and it was a ton of fun to put together! This is one of those nice Master Pieces, with decently thick cardboard and lovely printing. Everything stays together quite well. And the puzzle dust was at a minimum as well! These fairy tale puzzles that come in the book shaped boxes are quite nice!

Though I still can’t believe I did an entire thousand piece puzzle in essentially a day. @_@

A Second Howdy!

Hello, hello! I’m Puzzled Pickle, and this is my jigsaw puzzle blog! Well, my second blog… I’ve decided to give WordPress a try, as I haven’t been able to find many other puzzlers on Blogger. Maybe I’ll have better luck here! I’ve imported my posts (for some reason it only grabbed the latest 3, very odd), and will be continuing here!

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My current project: MB Puzzles  and Cardinal Games ‘Florabundance’ by Linda Ravenscroft, 1000 pieces. It’s proving to be a bit more challenging than I’d anticipated, but very, very fun. I adore the quality of this brand, the ‘premium quality blue board’ is certainly nothing to sneeze at!

We were a bit puzzled to get a mysterious shipping notice in our email a few days ago, and I was very excited to find it was from Master Pieces! Way back in October, I’d put in for a replacement for this puzzle:

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All the pieces were badly cut, some completely inseparable from their neighbors. Doable, yes, but as I purchased it new, I expect decent quality! They had me cut off the box flap containing the puzzle’s details and mail it in with a description of the problem. And I waited… and waited… Finally two weeks ago I emailed them again, asking if they’d yet received my letter. Turns out they had, back in November, but my replacement was a delayed due to heavy holiday orders.

My package arrived, and I sliced it open to reveal-

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Well, that’s not the same…

I’m both a tad annoyed and also very excited? The other puzzle is completely workable, so now I have two puzzles for the price of one, but I’m also glad I didn’t have my heart set on receiving the exact same puzzle I’d requested a new copy of… It’s just odd they didn’t send the same one, or at least a note explaining! Oh well, this new one will be fun to work regardless; I quite like the art!

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And here’s a snap of my modest Christmas gifts to myself. Our holidays were rather glum, as no one feels particularly like celebrating in the wake of my grandmother’s passing. We had a simple get together for snacks and chatting, rather than the big holiday meal we usually have. It was nice, even if there was an undertone of sadness.

My husband and I got a bit of money as gifts, and while the majority of it is destined for bills, he let me spend a bit beforehand! I snagged these two puzzles and a cute lil’ ratata plush from Gamestop. I’ve been eyeing the Power Ranger puzzle for months, and Magic The Gathering puzzle and plush were on clearance, buy one and get one free! Hard to pass that up!

Wishing everyone a Happy Holidays and a splendid New Year! I’ll leave you with a quick snap of my cats ‘assisting’ me in gluing a puzzle!

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