About Elspeth De Montes

Elspeth De Montes is Scottish but lives in North Yorkshire with her partner and twins. She is a LEGO Builder not a collector of sets, which in theory should make the hobby less expensive (ahem!) but monochrome collections can be pricey. You can see more of Elspeth's work on her blog or website and Flickr. Elspeth is also a bike lover; mountain bike, fixie, road bike, tri-bike (n+1=number of bikes I need).

Posts by Elspeth De Montes

A festive revamp for Turtle Tower in Hanoi

Turtle Tower sits upon an island on Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the historical centre of Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam. This temple is a famous landmark in Hanoi and has been built in LEGO by Vietnamese builder Hoang H Dang. Given the time of year, some festive artistic license has been applied and the tower is now giving off some serious ‘Gingerbread House’ vibes. The actual architectural features of the temple have been nicely captured, especially the decorative stonework on the roof. The gingerbread decoration is cute with candy canes, a nice colour selection of ‘candy’, and Santa rowing over the island to deliver some gifts.

Hoang Dang tells us that the lake was actually home to a very rare species of turtle which is now close to extinction. The last turtle that used to live in the lake sadly passed away this year leaving his cousins as the only two left on Earth, hence the small turtle on the left of the build.

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A Baltic blizzard blasts from this Bionicle build

A cold front has clearly influenced this build entitled Valtias, The Blizzard Tyrant by Dave Foreman. Although dominated by Bionicle parts, Dave has also used cold, icy parts from Chima and Hero factory to complete his build. The character started as a head using the Frost Beast mask from set 44011 Frost Beast and then borrows some armour and weapons from 8982 Strakk. A lot of frosty imagination has been used to complete this chilling tyrant. I particularly like the explosive blast of jagged shards extruding from his central chest and those sharp trans-blue claws on his hands and feet, that resemble built-in crampons.

Just don’t expect this tyrant to wash his hair – Dave admits that his huge chest has resulted in a rather limited shoulder movement. Despite the limited shoulder movement, Blizzard is still able to deftly hold those axes and is certainly not limited in charisma, as you can see from this ‘Joker-like’ pose.

An Avalonian home and gardens spills over the border

In the peaceful rural setting of Avalonia, there is a grand old house called Königsfeld Manor. Life in the village of Avalonia is normally peaceful, but this spring a visit from an old friend brings worrisome tidings. This diorama by Patrick Massey is the perfect antidote to the current wintry conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. There is a lot to admire in this scene with its engaging mix of landscaping and architecture. My favourite part is definitely the overspill of landscape beyond the black border, I think this may be the first time I have seen this technique used so effectively.

The main house has some lovely architectural details and surprisingly it appears to be built on stilts; perhaps the monsoon season brings flood water. The decorative roof ridges are not the usual village design so I wonder if there’s a more sinister character living here. There’s another small building under construction with just a wooden frame on show at the moment. Perhaps it’s a storage barn or a granny flat to stop granny hassling those who live in the main house… ‘Have you seen my glasses?’, ‘Can you pass me the scroll?’, ‘These carrots are undercooked!’…

Have a prawn or a prayer with these Chinese-style builds

Indonesian builder Anton Budiono‘s latest two builds are both Chinese-style creations in the shape of a seafood restaurant and temple, presumably for quiet postprandial contemplation. Both builds utilise the addition of the same bridge over to a smaller shrine that rests upon wooden decking. There are many details to admire in these builds but the roofs with their decorative ridges and fascia are a particular favourite of mine. There are so many nice little touches to be discovered, such as the telephone handsets forming the beams within the large red front doors or the Mixel ball joints used as structural decorations across the façade.

The seafood restaurant cleverly uses the dark red octopus as decoration in one corner of the building, but Anton’s brick built lobster on the first floor corner is even better and worth a closer look!

While the temple is a little more demure in colour, it also benefits from lots of nice details such as the cascading water feature on the left-hand side or the use of black palm tree tops as the lanterns at the front. There’s more to see around the back on Anton’s Flickr album.

Beat the weekend traffic with this Blacktron Assault Tank

Peter Reid, lover of all things spacey and grey in the LEGO world, has been building in black. More specifically, Peter has built a Blacktron Assault Tank in the classic Blacktron colours of black and yellow. Peter’s little tank is one of a collection of builds that showcase some black LEGO elements as part of The New Black parts festival on New Elementary. This cute little tank uses Nexo Knights shields and long skeleton legs to good effect, but the track with those lovely yellow ‘wheels‘ are a real highlight for me.

If you are experiencing some flashbacks to GI Joe then that’s because the design is loosely based on the Wolverine vehicle from the series. There are other views and further discussion over on the New Elementary blog post. I have to say that the only tank I have been in is a Challenger 2, and there were no black tassels hanging off the back.

John Lewis Christmas adverts recreated in LEGO [News]

UK retailer John Lewis have teamed up with the UK’s only LEGO Certified Professional Bright Bricks to recreate 5 years of classic John Lewis Christmas adverts. Something of a UK Christmas tradition for the past 10 years, the John Lewis’ adverts are eagerly awaited at the beginning of each festive season, ready to tug on heart-strings, bring a smile, and generally start the festive snowball rolling. The brick-built creations took a team of seven expert LEGO builders 116 hours to construct and comprise a staggering 9,400 bricks in total.

The 5 John Lewis adverts were shown between 2012 – 2016 and Bright Bricks captures the iconic moment from each advert. In 2012, the advert depicted a snowman’s epic journey across mountain, highway and manic shoppers to return to his waiting ‘snow-woman’ on Christmas morning. The Journey has 1,800 bricks and took 18 hours to build.

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A perilous jump into the LEGO fish market

If you have seen the 2010 movie The Tourist with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, you may have already recognised this scene. This LEGO version by LEGO Fjotten depicts the fish market scene, but can be enjoyed as a vignette without any knowledge of the movie. It is set in Venice and there are definitely Venetian vibes coming through with the gondola, some impeccably dressed minifigures, and the mix of Gothic windows and stone archways. This is a lovely vignette that all comes together nicely with the checked canopy over the fish market making for an eye-catching central focal point.

LEGO friends on vacation at the beach

One of the best aspects of the LEGO Friends theme has been the selection of lovely coloured parts supplied for creative builders. Brick Art has used this colourful palate to his advantage in a diorama entitled Best Friends on vacation. This is no camping holiday, as Brick Art has supplied the friends with a fancy restaurant, a sun trap cove to build sandcastles, an ice cream cafe, plus some pony trekking and surf lessons for the energetic ladies. This diorama represents some of the best features of the Friends range in terms of colours, accessories, animals and special bricks. I love the gold ingots stacked up to form the roof of the large central building at the rear.

The pink gates from the Friends stables look great as the restaurant’s pink awnings, while this angled view allows the steep curved stone wall to be admired. There is plenty of action going on and lots of nice little details to be explored.

This Keelung destroyer is knot Kidding about being in charge

Delayice has built a LEGO version of Kee Lung (DDG- 1801), a military destroyer ship in current service with the Republic of China Navy. Kee Lung was formerly the American Kidd-class destroyer USS Scott (DDG-995) which was decommissioned by the United States Navy in 1998 and sold to the Republic of China Navy in 2001. Delayice has managed to capture the sleek hull shape of Kee Ling despite not using any curved parts and has added extra details with the decorated tiles on deck. The communications and weapons array is particularly well built when compared with the actual ship, while the red and black hull provides some colour.

I particularly like the nice colour touches such as the little white cheese slope life-raft and the red modified plate at the rear of the ship representing the flag of the Republic of China.

Heartlake High gets ready to rumble with mecha minidolls

Rather like Marmite, Minidolls have had a habit of dividing opinion into ‘Love them’ or ‘Hate them’ since their introduction in 2012. I have to admit that I am normally firmly in the ‘Hate them’ camp as I much prefer the good old minifigure with its odd proportions and classic LEGO head. Well opinions can change, as along came Eric Teo with his troop of minidoll mecha.

He describes these as female rangers in hardsuits and they certainly seem to have attitude with their chunky, brightly coloured suits and sporting some Exo-Force-esque hairstyles. Each character wears a similar suit but with decorative differences and armed with their weapon of choice. There is not a hair bow nor butterfly accessory in sight!

It’s worth taking a closer look at these femme fatale rangers.

See more of these LEGO Friends mecha

Great balls of LEGO Mario firepower

These Fire Mario and Magikoopa sculptures by John Tooker show Fire Mario using his fireballs to fight Magikoopa (Kamek) on his way to face Bowser. Amazingly, these are John’s first LEGO sculptures and are definitely not small in scale. Mario stands about 18 inches tall and is made of approximately 2600 bricks, while Magikoopa was created using about 1300 bricks.

Mario’s face is well crafted and easily recognisable despite the use of simple bricks and plates rather than more complex parts. Sculptures designed on a larger scale can be pricey and heavy, so a lot of LEGO builders tend to stick to simpler 2×2 and 2×4 bricks for the bulk of their building.

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea

Mitsuru Nikaido is clearly a fan of the sea and its inhabitants. His LEGO coral reef is as colourful and teeming with sea life as the real thing. A giant squid, sea turtle and a great white shark are relaxing and enjoying some of the reef’s bounty, which in this case appear to be a school of nervous looking clownfish.

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