About Bart Willen

Bart Willen (badboytje88) has been a fan of LEGO for as long as he can remember. When he hit puberty and slowly but surely started losing interest in the brick, LEGO released their first line of Harry Potter sets. Keeping Bart from slipping to a Dark Age. He is a fan of a quite broad range of themes, from Star Wars to Johny Thunder and from Elves to City. But somehow he always navigates back to the magical world of Harry Potter. He attends LEGO World in the Jaarbuurs in Utrecht on a yearly basis where he enjoys meeting other fans and seeing some of their creations 'in the brick'. You can check out his own creations here.

Posts by Bart Willen

Pillaging and plundering your village with a massive grin

Hide your LEGO gold, daughters, and your catnip as Cecilie Fritzvold’s pirate cats are sailing the seven seas looking for treasure or maybe just a little saucer of milk. This motley crew is traveling on their majestic vessel, The Cheshire, looking for the fabled Lucky Cat Island. Led by their brave captain, the crew of brick-built cat pirates appears to include some dodgy characters that each embody what it is like to be a fearsome pirate. I bet these kittens aren’t afraid to get their tails wet!

PiCats of the Catibbean seas

The Fall of Gondolin and the diving board like balcony

For their latest LEGO creation Josiah Durand drew inspiration from ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ by J.R.R.Tolkien. Since I am not familiar with the source material, there is little I can say about this creation being true to the story. I can, however, say that it definitely deserves a mention on TBB. The castle is white with some tan details, but the dark grey rock formation it’s build on gives a great contrast in colour. The top of the castle is light grey and it ends with a flat rooftop – a detail we hardly ever see when it comes to LEGO castles. This flat roof is adorned with a diving board like balcony. Which to me always predicts a stand off between two nemeses that ends in one of the two falling off the balcony towards certain death. As we see in Josiah’s creation, that might just happen.

The Fall of Gondolin: In the King's Square

Two friendly neighbourhood giants started a forest band

We’ve featured The Birchwood Baron by Steven Erickson before on TBB. Not long after that Steven surprised us with The Red Oak Regent. Now we finally have a LEGO creation that features both these gentle forest giants. Steven’s creation is proof that minifigures do matter. With that I am not implying that a build without minifigures is not that interesting. I am implying that it pays off to carefully put your minifigures together. It is easily noticeable when the minifigures in a creation are just an afterthought. Steven mixes minifigure parts from a broad selection of themes and they are not just castle. We can spot some Disney parts, but also pirates, Lone Ranger BAM and CMF. Speaking of CMF, have you seen our elaborate LEGO CMF series 23 review?

Festive Forest

A bathroom to put all bathrooms to shame

As much as I love the LEGO Harry Potter sets I have to admit one thing. The scale they are built in does not lend itself to adding the amount of details I’d love to see. LEGO fan creations however never stop to amaze me. One of these creations is Moaning Myrtle by Caleb Schilling. Caleb built the prefects’ bathroom from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The use of the white half round tiles to add marble details to the bathtub wall looks splendid. It is also nice to see the Fabuland flask being used in a modern day creation. It is a bit bigger than minifigure scale but it works perfectly in this setting. Using old school lace fences to create the stained glass windows is a really nice touch. I love how the light appears to be peeking through all the trans clear plates.

Moaning Myrtle

Horse saddle roof castle

LEGO has released quite some specific horse saddles. We have them for regular LEGO horses, Belville horses, Scala horses and of course Friends horses. Kit Nugent used the latter to adorn their castle with a rather creative roofing. The entire castle is to die for. I have no idea how most of the parts are attached but I don’t care, it is amazing. I don’t think I’ll look at horse saddles the same way ever again. I might even start hoarding them to create my own horse saddle roof castle.

A Minifigures's House is His Castle

Beachy fun at the Sidewalk Cafe

LEGO Paradisa was one of the first attempts of LEGO to cater to girls and for its time really was groundbreaking. It brought us new colours, female figures and overall a beachy fun vibe. It is nice to see that up to this day the theme still inspires people. Eli Willsea hit the nail on the head with this creation. We get a remake of the 6402 Sidewalk Cafe. There are a lot of architectural details with columns, laced fences and croissants used to highlight the arches. Best part about this build has to be the plant trellis. It starts with flex tubing and minifigure hands on the side of the build. The horizontal trellis is made with bars with claws and hands and I have no idea how it is held together but I love it!

Sidewalk Cafe Revamp

Who needs Romeo when your balcony looks out at an amazing propagation station

Big LEGO castles are the bomb, but small really detailed medieval scenes also tickle our fancy. This scene by Eli Willsea is a great example of a small castle setting packed with little details. We are treated to a lovely balcony scene featuring a young woman looking out over a room filled with greenery. There is a trellis for a climbing plant which happens to be two green snakes. The integration of the bar with 3 leaves into the wall to turn it into a climbing plant is lovely. The brown flex tubing intertwining between the leaves works amazingly well as a plant stem. I love how this continues over the wooden beams hanging over the balcony, giving it a patio feel.

Gloria's Garden

There are a lot of trans-clear tiles used to represent a propagation station. I absolutely adore the use of the Captain Marvel mohawk used to represent a box of presumably hay. The use of the Minions hair as table legs is stunning in its simplicity. The best feature of this creation has to be the use of the minifigure action pose bar with stud to make the railing of the balcony. So clever and visually appealing!

Elope with me, or in this case erow with me

Leave it to to Ralf Langer to draw inspirations from pirates and turn it into a surreal work of art using LEGO as the medium. We see two figures in a boat rowing across the sea. In the middle of the sea there is a square frame almost like a window in a wall.

The surreal "Sea"cret hideout

We can see two of the four sides of the frame and they show us two completely different worlds. One of them is a Tudor style building that we’ve come to know and love when it comes to Ralf Langer creations. The other one is a stone temple hidden in the midst of an enchanted forest. The two figures in the rowing boat represent inhabitants from these worlds. This is highly interpreted but my guess is they are lovers from two different worlds who are eloping. I might have over romanticised this a bit though.

A tale of bridging and branching

There is something about pretty sunsets that make people want to take pictures of them. Same apparently goes for LEGO sunsets. This build by gGh0st features a wooden bridge that is covered in tree branches. In my humble imagination this bridge connects the village to the castle. On it we can see a lot of villagers trading and selling their goods. We can spot a baker, a guard, a troubadour and several customers. Apparently the livestock are allowed to walk the not enclosed bridge freely, which to me sounds like asking for trouble, but apparently for these people it works.

Of Bridging and Branching - Sunset

If you look closely at the rocks forming the mountains on which both the castle and the village are built, you’ll notice that it is a mumbo jumbo of different pieces. I have no idea how they are connected but it looks amazing. There even are little vines creeping between the rocks. You’ll notice these a lot better when you take a look at the midday picture of this creation. If you take a closer look at the background of the creation you’ll notice more rocks at the bottom of the picture and these rocks are formed out of loose unconnected LEGO bricks which is an easy yet very convincing method to make a rocky background. Not everything has to be a hassle.

Dragon pagoda but subterranean and also in a cave

Ever since the pandemic I haven’t been on a holiday. So my expectations when it comes to holiday destinations have become very high. I almost expect them to look as magical as this LEGO subterranean Dragon pagoda in a cave by Jaap Bijl. I have to be honest, English being my second language, I had to look the word subterranean up. And it turns out to mean ‘done under the earth’s surface’ or ‘secret/concealed’. And now I am not a bit closer to understanding whether this Dragon pagoda is either under the earth’s surface or very well concealed. So I decided that this Dragon pagoda is secretly hidden underneath the earth’s surface.

The dragon cave

What strikes me about this creation is the use of colour. The cave is dark grey, the base of the temple is grey, the water is sand green and the soil in the cave is sand blue. All muted colours go great with the lavender foliage and the details on the pagoda. They almost make the lavender look a bit greyish. And then bam in the centre of it all there is this light blue pagoda roof which really pops. The pillars supporting the bright blue roof are adorned at the top and the bottom with stone carved dragon heads. You really have to zoom in on the temple to spot them but they are done exceptionally well.

Multiple tears were shedded in the making of this build

Ivan Martynov shows us, in LEGO form, what happens to that one sprouting onion that has been lying in your kitchen pantry for way too long. Apparently after sprouting they grow arms and legs and a fondness of blowing things up with their grenade launchers. So my advice to you is to quickly check your pantry at home for sprouting onions and make a delicious onion soup, because you don’t want one of these bad boys to go rogue on you and blow up your kitchen.

Onion Onslaught

Dead men don’t sweat

Okay, I have to admit, I am nog a big connoisseur when it comes to LEGO big figures, technique, Bionicle and Galidor. But I do know an amazing creation using parts from those themes when I see one. This creation by Nikita Nikolsky features a lot of weird and interesting parts. I am just about sure there is even DUPLO hidden in the design of the treasure chest.

Dead men don't sweat

There is a lot to love about these figures. For one the expression on their faces. For two undead characters they appear to be very much alive and kicking. The attention to detail, when you look at the belt buckle or the gold embellishment on the shoes. And last but not least, the exaggeration when it comes to the size of the lock on the chest, but also the use of a plunger for a peg leg. Nikita also has been experimenting with the distance between the two characters and their scales. One is actually built on a smaller scale than the other.