Tag: Cross & Glory

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Some Flower Puzzles

I have done a bunch of puzzles over the last week, and several of them feature flowers, so I thought I would post them all together.

Wildflowers of North America is a 1000-piece puzzle from BBOLDIN, which is basically a generic Chinese brand you can find on Amazon. I knew this image might be a bit challenging for me, but I also knew that these brands print letters on the back of their puzzles so that you can sort the pieces into several sections to make it easier.

I enjoyed doing this one. It is so satisfying to do each section, and I especially like all the words at the top and bottom. This is very similar to a mushroom puzzle that I did a while ago.

Fantasy Gardens is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Liselle Larsen. This was a quick, easy puzzle. I usually reserve the term puzzle snack for 200 pieces or less, but this went so fast that it felt like one. The image is well-designed for doing a puzzle.

City Garden Rainbow Retreat is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cross & Glory, who use AI to generate their art. I fell in love with this image the first time I saw it and was so happy to be able to get it.

I love the abstract nature of this image. Because it has somewhat of a rainbow pattern, I did sort by color up front. Usually, I just pull out the edges and flip the rest of the pieces over and put them in sorting trays, but it definitely helped to do more sorting for this one. This puzzle was on the more difficult side, but it was never overwhelming, and I felt like I made slow but continual progress.

I love that I have had so much time to puzzle the last couple of weeks. My stash of puzzles to do was getting pretty big, and it feels good to make a dent in it and do some of the puzzles I have been looking forward to.

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Cat in a Bird’s Nest

Cat in a Bird’s Nest is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cross & Glory. This is my third puzzle from them, and it was a lot of fun. It looked like it would be hard because of all the blue and white pieces, but it was actually pretty easy. Most of the pieces had a pattern which made it easy to see where they went.

I’m still a bit ambivalent about the fact that they use AI to generate their images. I usually search to see if I can find similar artwork on a traditional brand before buying one of theirs.

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Owl Oasis: The Vibrant Perch

Owl Oasis: The Vibrant Perch is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cross & Glory. This is the second puzzle I have done from this brand. The quality was just as good as the first one, and it was a very satisfying build.

I was so drawn to this image because of the vibrant colors and incredible detail. It was a difficult puzzle but still enjoyable.

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Festival of the Nine Birds

Festival of the Nine Birds is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cross & Glory, which is a new puzzle brand for me. I had seen this puzzle online a while ago and put it on my wishlist, but it was pretty expensive, so I kept holding off on the purchase. At some point, it went on sale enough for me to spring for it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. The image was so interesting with a lot of different colors and textures, and the piece quality was quite good as well.

Here’s a picture of the finished puzzle:

Normally I post images of my puzzles to Instagram and Facebook. On Facebook, they go on my feed and on two puzzle groups I am a part of. When I posted this one, I got a comment on one of the posts saying that this person won’t do puzzles from the brand because they use AI generated images and lie about it. Another person then commented that they didn’t care if they were AI because they liked the images so much.

I looked into it and there is some discussion on Reddit about this company using AI generated images. Apparently, they used to have an artist’s page that was AI generated but took it down after some people questioned it.

I’m not totally sure how I feel about doing puzzles with AI generated images. I know some people are totally against it on principle and other people just don’t like when companies aren’t upfront about it. On the one hand, the art is generated based off the AI’s consumption of existing art, so it could be considered unfair to those artists. On the other hand, every artist is influenced by what they have seen and experienced in their lives and that is okay.

I am going to have to think about this some more before I come to a conclusion. In the meantime, I already have another puzzle from this brand, and I will be putting it together since I already own it.