A Tale of Two Peacocks

It was the best of puzzles ... it was the worst of puzzles.

This is the true story of "you get what you pay for." In May, I gave myself the challenge of putting together the two round jigsaw puzzles I own. They also happened to both be images of peacocks.

The first is a gorgeous, big, high-quality 500-piece puzzle from Bits and Pieces. It was a gift from a friend of mine who knew I was having some anxiety issues through the pandemic, and knows I use jigsaw puzzles as a way to level out my emotions.

Isn't it pretty!

The colors are bright. The image is crisp. The pieces are a nice thick cardstock that allows the puzzle to snap together securely.

Check out how vibrant the colors are in the birds

and the flowers.

Nice puzzle!

The second puzzle is one of my one dollar finds. It's a 350-piece puzzle by Cra-Z-Art. I don't expect much from these little puzzles. A few hours of distraction. A way to turn a pile of chaos into order.

I think this illustration is quite pretty. The colors are vibrant. But the image is soft-focused with no sharp details. 

I can deal with mushy details. But this! Ohhh. This is a big Bozo No-No. Look at all the puzzle dust! Ugh. I cleaned up the worst of it after sorting the pieces, but the darn flimsy pieces kept shedding through the entire process of building the puzzle. What a dirty mess.

The cardstock is terribly thin. The plies are not well-glued to each other. Worse than usual. And the machine that cut the puzzle obviously needs its blades sharpened. There were many many pieces that came out of the box still connected. More than one normally expects. Those that were separated had tags of the puzzle backs stuck in the tab sockets. While sorting, I had to rip out a lot of that excess cardboard. This, of course, made the pieces even thinner, flimsier, uneven in thickness, and less likely to hold in place.

In fact, after I finally constructed this frustrating puzzle, as I was moving it into place to photograph it, the puzzle fell apart. Sigh.

This is one puzzle I won't repeat. In fact, I won't even bother purchasing another round puzzle. I put jigsaws together for fun and relaxation. This definitely wasn't worth the frustration.

On a happy note, where Jodie works, they have a jigsaw puzzle exchange. People who like puzzles can bring the ones they no longer want, and exchange them for someone elses's puzzles. Sort of like a lending library, but you can keep the puzzles if you want to. 

After the pandemic, her workplace got inundated with puzzles people put together during lockdown. Remember the days of jigsaw puzzle scarcity? Yesterday Jodie brought me about 15 "new" puzzles. My shelves are overflowing. I have days and days of fun to look forward to.