Tessellating Madness -- a puzzle to spark creativity

When trying out Cuttle a while ago, I made a tessellating shape and used their tiling functions to build it out to cut a whole sheet to make a puzzle out of. Then I got side tracked until one day, a friend of one of my puzzle fans contacted me asking if I had anything new that this fan didn’t already own for a surprise birthday present. So I dusted off this old file, cleaned it up, removed all doubled paths that come from overlaying shapes, painted a blank in random blobby fiery colors, and cut it out!


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Since then I have made a good amount of these – they are fun to paint and fun to assemble! My original idea was that, since each piece fits into another and are a true tessellation, it could be fun to just place them together and create different abstract patterns with the paint. Of course, puzzlers being puzzlers, 1) had to find the “true” solution (that of how it was painted), and 2) put them together in ways that never even crossed my mind!

When you make a thing, you tend to be too close to see anything different than your intentions. So when someone found that the outer curls fit into each other, all of sudden a new layer of creativity was opened!


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“Meditating Alien” :joy_cat::joy_cat::joy_cat:

I’ve only recently started painting other things on these, like the Koi, Cherry Blossoms, and Butterflies above. Any idea what else – that is relatively simple to paint :sweat_smile: – would work in random groupings like this?

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These are amazing!

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Thank you @rvogt! The “plain” ones are so much fun to paint – I call them “Watercolor Jazz”, since I get to experiment with different color combinations, and blending. Watercolors on primed wood don’t react the same as they do on watercolor paper, so I am always learning something new about how the paint moves and how I can manipulate it, or gently add another layer to increase saturation. The crowning (and messiest part) glory is the spattering of colors that I do at the end. The last step helps the whole puzzle gain a sense of liveliness :heart_eyes_cat::heart_eyes_cat::heart_eyes_cat:

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You have definitely accomplished the liveliness! These really pop!

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These look amazing with paint! I really like the variations too, omitting some of the pieces or making designs using the triangle “grid”.

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These are beautiful!!! Our grandchildren love creating something out of assorted shapes, or craft sticks, or whatever. Adults should enjoy that same creative outlet.

These are fantastic!

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Pretty wonderful bunch of designs in my opinion! I love a unique puzzle design (I’ll bet your cats do too!)

Regarding additional design ideas, how about random leaves in fall colors?

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Those all look fantastic! Another of those “someday…” things for me! Definitely love how you can create different shapes with the same puzzle. It’s like a flat erector or tinker toy set!

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How are you handling kerf correction on these? Does the fact that this shape tesselate mean that the only effect of kerf is to make the pieces that much smaller, but they still interlock perfectly?

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very beautiful stuff here !

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@tobyschachman, the paint really helps the puzzle reach it’s true potential! Thanks for sharing the original on the Cuttle Discord, and these too :heart_eyes_cat::heart_eyes_cat::heart_eyes_cat:

@ptodd, I agree that adults need a creative “outlet” to let them plug in to being a child again! It always makes me sad when someone claims to be “not creative” in any way.

@cynd11, my cat intern has tried to pick up a few puzzle pieces with his mouth, which is adorable and immediately taken away :sweat_smile: I love the idea of falling leaves! Thank you!!!

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I came across this channel tonight. The video go through the theory but ends with the product of a CNC carving using two tones acrylic. Three clicking through to other videos I found a while new world of puzzles and geometric shapes. Wow.

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Woah – cool stuff, thanks for sharing that @marmak3261! Reminds me of how Nervous System creates their puzzle shapes programmatically.

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I refuse to fall down the rabbit hole until this weekend. Thank you.

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Those are sooo cool!

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Thank you @ovm.steve! Gearing up to cut another 4 today, and someone on Facebook suggested falling leaves as a new pattern :heart_eyes_cat::heart_eyes_cat::heart_eyes_cat:

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Please share that one when you’re done. With all the orange, yellow and reds it should be beautiful.

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You are a genius.

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I didn’t understand much of that video, but it was fascinating.

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@kelley1, just slightly puzzle demented :joy_cat::joy_cat::joy_cat:

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