LEGO Botanicals Flower Wall Home Décor, 879 pc.

The frame trellis for this set is amazingly sturdy. I could hold it without feeling like it would come apart, and it did not bend or bow like some of the LEGO Art frames when handled. The flowers are mostly easy to build, but look complex and lovely, and they are all solidly built, not too fragile, and securely attached to the trellis. If lightly knocked or set down, I didn't have to constantly rebuild, and the blooms felt solid in my hands. When pushing them down to connect the blooms to the stems and frame, I did not feel like I would break the flowers and have to rebuild them. I also love that it will hang on the wall and not take up shelf space. My favourite flowers were the small yellow and red buds and the small purple flowers around the periphery. I really loved that this set could be built over numerous short sessions without having to leave a mess of pieces out and risk losing momentum in your build. The first bag was the trellis, and each subsequent bag had two to three blooms to build, so I could build a couple of flowers, attach them, and then put everything away and cone back to it. I could also build the flowers out of order, for example bag 7 before bag 6, without causing chaos and frustration. (I did set the completed flowers from later bags aside when I went back to build earlier ones so that it was not too difficult to attach them in the suggested arrangement). I thought that the complex layering of the pieces beautifully achieved the layered petal effect that would be seen on real flowers. I like to build LEGO for the precise instructions and the ability to turn off my crearive decision making, so I very much appreciate how precise the placement and arrangement of the flowers is so I don't have to decide how to customize it. There are plenty of options for customization and some instructions for that in the back of the booklet, if that is your preference. There were minor negatives about the set: The hydrangea instructions were hard to follow. I could not achieve the desired cone shape by arranging the butterflies as shown, even after alternating the butterfly orientation and angles several times. It still looked nice, and the hydrangea is behind other blooms, so the shape does not detract from the overall bouquet. Although I knew that the trellis could hang vertically or horizontally, I wish that the instructions for the.horizontal orientation were at the front of the booklet, too, or there was a reminder to visit the back of the book if you wanted to use that configuration. That being said, the vertical arrangement is well thought out, dynamic and makes great use of shapes, height and colour to make a realistic trellis bouquet. At the end of the instructions, you are instructed to build two structures that are presumably used to attach a second set to the first, but I had to investigate for a couple minutes to figure out what I was supposed to do with them once built. This set is also expensive for the piece count, but the dynamic colours and creative use of different shapes likely accounts for that and the end result is overall worth the premium price, but I definitely would have hesitated if I did not have LEGO points to offset the price. This is one of the most eye-catching botanical sets from LEGO so far, and was a fun build. I highly recommend this set.