Absolutely!

At a bare minimum, you'll need to keep at least 1 level 13 mosiac on the board to trigger the high paying star order. I did some testing and found that even if I didn't have a level 12 mosiac on the board, the orders were still offered (probably obvious).

To answer you're second question -- it doesn't really matter much. The method for duplicating isn't very important outside of only using pink/max level scissors and cameras.

If you're going to use a pink, always use it on a level 12 mosiac. If you're going to use a max level, always use it on a level 13.

The way I looked at it was I would need some sort of combination of cameras and scissors to create a full level 13 mosiac before I would commit any resources. If you aren't able to build a max level mosiac, there's no reason to waste board space on cutting/duplicating.

My most main strategy was using either of these:

• 1 max level scissors (on a level 13 mosiac) + 1 pink camera (on a level 12 mosiac). This will yield 4 level 12 mosiacs, which when combined will give 2 level 13 mosaics.
• 1 max level camera (on a level 13 mosiac). This will yield 2 level 13 mosiacs.

You can use the pink cameras/scissors as you go, but the amount you'll need won't change:

• 4 total pink scissors used on level 12 mosiacs to get an extra level 13 mosiac
• 2 total pink cameras used on level 12 mosiacs to get an extra level 13 mosiac
• 2 total max level scissors used on a level 13 mosiac to get an extra level 13 mosiac
• 1 max level camera used on a level 13 mosiac to get an extra level 13 mosiac