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

Chanel Crystal House glistens in LEGO bricks

If you visit the Chanel boutique in Amsterdam, you will find that the façade of Crystal Houses Amsterdam uses glass bricks to recreate the city’s traditional architectural style. The transition from bricks to glass has been elegantly captured in LEGO by builder  YellowBox. This is a striking creation  and, although there was some controversy over the actual building, the LEGO version works beautifully.

This is not just a façade but a modular building with three floors of the boutique shopping where fashionistas can plan their spring attire.

Click to see the interior of this modular building

M-Sport Ford Fiesta WRC rally car and 1968 Mustang Fastback race into LEGO line-up [News]

We announced the 2018 LEGO Speed Champions line-up last month, but Ford have shared a few more images of two Ford LEGO vehicles to get the adrenaline pumping. The new LEGO Speed Champions M-Sport Ford Fiesta WRC rally car and 1968 Mustang Fastback will be available from March 1, 2018, priced at €14.99/£12.99/

Photo: Drew Gibson

The 203 piece set includes a choice of wheel trims, two interchangeable bonnets – one featuring spotlights for night driving, authentic miniature race-graphics and a driver minifigure with helmet and racing overalls that can be placed inside the car through the removable windshield.

Photo: Drew Gibson Click to see more images of the Ford Speed Champions vehicles

Minifigure hairstyles – which styles were a cut above the rest in 2017? [Feature]

Looking back, it felt as though 2017 was a year full of minifigures sporting cool hairstyles. I imagine the release of The LEGO Ninjago Movie Collectible Minifigure Series had a key role in supplying these modern hairstyles, along with Batman and the odd Star Wars eclectic hairstyle. I thought it would be interesting to step inside LEGO’s minifigure hair salon to take a look back at some of the more interesting styles that LEGO introduced for our little friends last year.

Stepping out of LEGO's 2017 Hair Salon Continue reading →

Take to the skies in your own little helicopter [Instructions]

Perhaps this helicopter is actually a better size for ants rather than people, but it is definitely a fun little LEGO build. GolPlaysWithLego has built this great microscale helicopter out of 30 LEGO parts.  The fuselage is built using some of the newer 1×2 curved slopes with notch and the tail rotor is a boomerang. Clever use of parts for a small build!

Nano Chopper LEGO MOC Click here for Instructions

Enter Kill Teal (Volume 2) contest to win 10260 Downtown Diner [News]

Our friends over at New Elementary are holding a contest in honour of the reintroduction of teal-coloured LEGO elements by LEGO.  There are some great prizes to be won, including two Grand Prize winners receiving a copy of 10260 Downtown Diner.  The competition is based on the ‘Mark Stafford Killed Teal’ story (if you do not know this story, it is explained on the competition page), and a previous build of mine that jokingly showed Mark Stafford killing Teal by sweeping it into a furnace.

Your entry should be a LEGO creation depicting the following: How might Mark Stafford kill teal again? The closing date is 22 February 2018, so there’s still time to get building and enter.  All the details, rules and entry form can be found over on New Elementary’s contest page.

Iconic VW Golf GTi Mk1 in LEGO

The Volkswagen Golf GTi Mk1 first went on sale in Germany in June 1976 and was only available as a 3-door version. Although the Golf was meant to be a small, fuel-efficient car model, a group of VW engineers worked on the sport version in their spare time. To many, the Golf GTi Mk1 is the boy racer’s car of the 1980’s and Joe Perez has captured its distinctive form in LEGO.

Golf GTi Mk1

Golf GTi Mk1

Click to take a look inside Joe’s VW GTi Mk1 and under the hood

Nip to the nearest coffee stop in The Punisher’s Cafe Racer [Instructions]

The term ‘cafe racer’ actually originated amongst motorcyclists from the London area in the early 1960s when bikes were used for short, quick rides between cafés. These lightweight bikes were designed for speed, agility and handling rather than comfort – hence the relatively short distance covered before the need to stop for a brew. BenFifteenTheChicken has built a LEGO version of the cafe racer owner by Marvel’s The Punisher character, it’s a fun little build with some clever techniques to capture the bike in minifigure scale.

Lego The Punisher's Cafe Racer instruction.

Ben has kindly provided instructions to allow you to build your own cafe racer and the parts list is shown. Don’t worry if you do not have all the parts in the correct colours, just use the pieces you have and enjoy building a unique cafe racer for your own minifigures.

Lego The Punisher's Cafe Racer instruction.

Click here for the instructions to build you own cafe racer

Shrinking the ship in a bottle, even smaller

The latest LEGO Ideas model, 21313 Ship in a Bottle was released last week and some fans of the original model were sad to see the final model was smaller.  Rather than build the actual set, Jme Wheeler has built a microscale version that can be displayed on even the smallest of shelves. It is not always easy to capture the essence of a larger set in a much smaller scale, but this is a fantastic little ship in a bottle.  In particular, the use of 1×1 tiles held upright by the 1×1 modified clips is a great way to create the masts and sails.

Ship in a Bottle Micro (s)

It may seem that Jme Wheeler has made the smallest ship in a bottle possible, but it didn’t take long for another even tinier version to wash up.  Elijah Bormann has managed to build an smaller representation of the model with his adorable single stud sized ship.

Miniature Ship in a Bottle

So, does anyone think that one more, even smaller version is possible?

Well after posing the questions, I had to at least have a shot at building a nanoscale version of Ship in a Bottle.

Nanoscale Ship in Bottle

World’s largest wooden roller coaster built entirely out of LEGO

The introduction of new roller coaster parts in 70922 Joker Manor was a source of great excitement, even more so when we managed to power the roller coaster. These roller coaster endeavours pale in significance when compared to this enormous wooden-style coaster build by Chairudo. It uses nearly 90,000 LEGO pieces and took Chairudo over 800 hours to build. It’s 6.5 meters long, 1.2  meters wide, 1.4 meters tall, and has a track length of 26 meters.

Lego Rollercoaster

We actually highlighted this amazing wooden LEGO rollercoaster last year, but since then it has found a well-deserved home in Hamleys in Prague. There are two new videos now available, the first is an introduction and overview of the rollercoaster, while the second gives you a seat at the front of the ride to maximise the experience.

Click here to enjoy a passenger view of the ride and see more images of this monster rollercoaster

Come in and have a seat, build your own chair [Instructions]

Making LEGO furniture that meets the needs of your minifigures usually means utilising some of the smaller, more fiddly LEGO parts.  Sarah Beyer has created some beautiful LEGO homes, each furnished for the most discerning of minifigures. There are instructions for three different chairs that feature in Cocoa Jungle Cottage and House on Striped Pillars. So take a relaxing seat in a comfy looking armchair…once you have built it of course!

House on Striped Pillars reading chair

Arm chair instructions (House on Striped Pillars MOC)

Click here to see the instructions for two more chairs

LEGO Ford GT40 in Gulf Oil colours

The orange and blue colour scheme of the Ford GT40 Gulf represents the corporate colours of Gulf Oil. The original race car took part in Daytona and Sebring in 1967 as an independent entry by Gulf Oil executive vice president Grady Davis. Joachim Klang has managed to accurately build a LEGO version of this famous car using both brick and sticker solutions to pick out the orange highlights. The shaping of the chassis is fantastic at this scale, the sloped hood and front  bumper are particularly well constructed.

Ford GT40 Gulf version

It is worth noting that everything in the image is brick-built, from the paint brushes and paint pots, to the scalpel used to cut the stickers. No detail has been missed, including the unfinished driver still on the sprue.

Ford GT40

Is this inquisitive robot sentient or just performing a task?

In many movies depicting robots, artificial intelligence (A.I.) and the challenge of determining whether an A.I. is sentient often develops as part of the plot. Movies and shows like Westworld, Star Wars, and Short Circuit all feature robots that appear to share more human emotions like empathy, curiosity, hurt, anger. This LEGO mecha built by Nick Dryvvall captures the impression of robot sentience in my mind. The crouched pose, inquisitively reaching out to touch something newly discovered is reminiscent of a child crouching with the same intent. I find it most endearing and I can almost hear a few delighted little beeps emanating from the captivated robot.

SBM8 Grifon (Inquisitive)

The same mecha looks altogether different in a more agressive pose with its inquisitive arm stowed and weapons at the ready.

SBM8 Grifon (3/4)