Tag: MasterPieces

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St. Basil Cathedral

St. Basil Cathedral is a 500-piece puzzle from MasterPieces. My friend Kim picked this out for me for my birthday, which was really sweet of her. It’s not a typical image that I would choose, but I do like the interesting colors and patterns of the cathedral and really enjoyed that part of the puzzle.

The sky was fairly difficult, especially since there was so much of it. I had to sort by shape and it was still slow going getting the pieces in. Thankfully, each piece is unique so I knew when I had one in the right spot.

I keep a lot of my puzzles to do again, but this one I will be putting in the swap pile to pass on. Once is enough for that sky!

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Crows Nest Harbor and Young Patriots: A Double Dose of Americana

Crows Nest Harbor is a 1000-piece puzzle from MasterPieces, and the artist is Art Poulin, who was an American folk artist. This puzzle was actually the oldest on my to do shelf. I kept passing it over and finally decided it was time to pull it down and do it.

I really enjoy puzzles with buildings, and this one was especially fun with the distinct bright colors for each building. The amount of dock and sky was small enough that they weren’t very tricky, either.

It felt good to be puzzling after an almost two-week break. (No big reason for the break, I’ve just been reading a lot more.)

I was still in the mood for Americana the following day, so I did this 500-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games called Young Patriots. It is a Charles Wysocki and features more of my beloved buildings along with other charming details. It was a lot of fun.

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Walden’s Manor House

Walden’s Manor House is a 1000-piece puzzle from MasterPieces, and the artist is Art Poulin. Poulin is known for his folk art and wanted this image to show the difference between the social classes of the time with this upstairs/downstairs cross-section of a manor house.

It was an enjoyable build of medium difficulty. I got it at the puzzle swap I went to a few weeks ago and was happy to see that all of the pieces were there.

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A Walk on the Pier

A Walk on the Pier is a 300-piece puzzle from MasterPieces, and the artist is Art Poulin. I got it at the puzzle swap I attended recently.

This was another fun, quick puzzle with large, random-cut pieces. It was fun to do, and I like the image a lot.

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Completing the Puzzle – October 2024

This was my second box of four puzzles from my Completing the Puzzle subscription. I enjoyed three out of the four, but that fourth one had me questioning whether I want to continue with the subscription! I have decided to give it another month and see how it goes.

The first puzzle I did was Sugar Spectrum from the brand Fred. It was 500 pieces, and the artist was Emily Blincoe. It is a classic rainbow style puzzle and was a lot of fun, as well as being pretty easy. I have done several puzzles of this style, and this one was a good representation of it.

My second puzzle was Le Cinque Terre, which was also from Fred and 500 pieces. This is the one that made me question everything. I really liked the image from Maurizio Santucci and Elisa Certi. I enjoy buildings and this one had adorable ones. At first glance, the sky and sea didn’t seem too bad, but they were actually horrible. I had to take the sky apart several times before finally getting it together – there were so many false fits that I almost gave up. When I finally finished the sky, I found there was one piece missing. Ugh!

I did give up on the sea. The parts with a design on them weren’t bad, but the plain blue pieces seemed to go together correctly until I realized I had two open spots but the two pieces I had left were different shapes than the openings I had. I did find one piece out of place and fixed that, but I couldn’t find the culprits that caused the mismatch at the end. I finally gave up and just left the pieces out.

I had another Fred puzzle in my box but decided to switch it up and do the MasterPieces 300-piece puzzle from Dean Russo called Mad Kitty. This one had large EZ Grip pieces that would be great for someone with arthritis or some other hand issue. It was random cut as well, which was fun. I love cats, so this image was great. I also enjoyed how colorful and chaotic the pattern was. Super fun!

The last puzzle I completed from this month’s box was Beach Trash, also from Fred. It was 500 pieces and the artist was Emily Blincoe, just like the Sugar Spectrum puzzle I did earlier. It was one I had seen online before but never quite liked enough to buy it outright, so I was glad to get the chance to do it this way. It was a good puzzle; the difficulty was medium low so I never got stuck or frustrated.

I find it interesting how I can have such a negative feeling towards the subscription when three of the four puzzles had absolutely no problems at all. That one bad experience almost overwhelms the positive feelings from the other three. But, like I said above, I am not going to cancel just yet. I am going to give it another month and see how it goes.

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Welcoming All

Welcoming All is a Color Sauce puzzle from MasterPieces, and it is 500 pieces. I ordered this specifically so I could do something Pride related during the month of June.

This was a very fun puzzle to do. I love things that are in rainbow order because it is easy to separate the pieces by color and also very satisfying to see each section come together. I love the image with the wood grain look of the different color panels along with the solid black heart at the center.

I was a bit nervous to post this on Facebook because I have a lot of conservative friends. I did get one like that I was surprised by, and I only got one negative comment and he only said “Nah?”, so not too bad overall.

I also reactivated my Reddit account and started posting in the r/jigsawpuzzles subreddit. This was the first puzzle I posted there. I may go back and post older puzzles interspersed with the current ones, although that does offend my sense of order, so I’m not sure how I will do it.

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Passing Through

The puzzle is called Passing Through, and it’s part of the Hometown Gallery series from MasterPieces. The artist is Bonnie White. This is a 1000 piece puzzle that I received as a Christmas gift last year from my mother-in-law, who was my Secret Santa in the family gift exchange.

For the gift exchange, we each write down three things we want and then pick a random slip from the basket to choose who we will buy for. I said I would like a 500-1000 piece puzzle, but didn’t specify beyond that, so it was interesting to see what was picked out for me. She actually got me two, and this is the first one I have done. I did enjoy it, but this year I do plan on saying which puzzles I want since there are so many on my wish list!

Here’s the puzzle after a couple of short sessions working on it:

The balloons and the houses were the easiest part. After that I did the water, the people, and the animals. Then remaining path, grass/trees, and sky were a bit harder, and they required a bit of shape sorting, but I eventually got them done. Here’s the finished puzzle:

Unfortunately, there was one piece missing. I can’t guarantee I didn’t lose it somehow, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. There was also one piece that was bent, which made the pieces in that area lay a bit wonky. The overall quality of the puzzle wasn’t fantastic, but it wasn’t terrible either.

Here’s where the missing piece was:

All in all, this was a fun puzzle to do. Now on to the next one!