Every LEGO-loving home should have some brick-built decorations. Why not take inspiration from seb toutouille and build your own lovely little snow globe model? This is so sweet, with good use of unicorn horns and ice cream scoops to create snowy upper branches for the trees. The silver and gold microfigures add a nice touch of festive sparkle to proceedings too. I could just see this as a table decoration during Christmas dinner.
No sleigh required here — aido k‘s LEGO Santa Claus seems quite happy taking a ride directly on Rudolph’s back. This is a fun model, with printed eyes giving Santa’s face a whole heap of character, and nice use of Mixel joints to provide dynamic posing for the dashing reindeer. Santa’s gloves are excellent, and I love Rudolph’s nose and antlers. The white base is a smart touch, giving just enough context to the model, and suggesting a bouncing boisterous progress across the snow.
Saint Nick needs to be in peak physical condition at this time of year. Sebastian Bachórzewski‘s compact LEGO scene shows some of the efforts the big man goes to in order to be ready for the 24th. I particularly like the way the treadmill has been put together, and Santa’s clothing lying in his locker is a nice touch. However, I’m not sure pizza is a good shout — something higher in protein, perhaps with fewer carbs, might be a better nutritional choice.
As winter closes in up in the northern hemisphere, LEGO builders’ attention invariably turns to depictions of snow and ice — and for Star Wars fans, ’tis the season to be Hothy. Tim Goddard uses microscale building to great effect to depict the moment when Luke and Han get rescued after their impromptu overnight camping trip at the start of Empire Strikes Back. The little Snowspeeder is nicely done, but the highlight of this tiny scene is that tiny gutted Tauntaun — corpse-based sleeping bags never looked so good.
LEGO lends itself well to repeating patterns, but we don’t see a lot of circular ones. Azurekingfisher addresses that omission with this beautiful wreath built from tree branches, angel wings, elephant trunks, and various flower parts.
Seeing as it’s December, I may take inspiration from this and attempt some brick-built Christmas decorations on this sort of pattern. I’m thinking this would make a lovely festive wreath with a bit of dark green and red in amongst the gold and white. The builder has made some more colourful versions of the same design in the past, and they look stunning laid out alongside one another.
We don’t feature minifig-only photos often, but as our Editor-In-Chiefness Andrew occasionally reminds us, Brothers Brick was originally a minifig-focused site. However, this fun image from legojeff deserves your attention for two reasons. Firstly, it’s got great parts choice, and an imaginative upside-down use of the skirt piece. But secondly, and more importantly, it highlights an under-reported problem for minifigs across the world — accidental death by vacuum. Let’s hope this image goes some way to prompting more focus on this troubling issue.
Let a little colour into your LEGO life with this collection of brick-built colour swatch cards from Anthony SÉJOURNÉ. A simple build to be sure, but so clean and smart. Shame the white halves of the cards don’t have the same rounded corners as the coloured parts, but that’s nitpicking. I want a set of these to turn the design guys at my work green with envy (2423 C green to be precise).
And for the real graphic design geeks amongst you, it looks like Anthony has even used the proper Pantone typeface for the custom stickers featuring the colour names — Akzidenz Grotesk. I might be wrong on that front, but it looks pretty close to me.
We’ve perhaps not seen as many Eastern-influenced LEGO creations as we might have expected following the LEGO Ninjago Movie and sets, but here’s an excellent medieval/Oriental ship creation from ElviN. The colour scheme is a little sombre, but that’s helping me imagine this her slipping her moorings before dawn and heading silently out of harbour, bound for faraway shores on nefarious Imperial business. The vessel’s dragon prow is nicely-done, and the circular entrances, lanterns, and roofing all contribute to an Eastern feel to the ship’s lines. But my favourite touch is the line of oars — protruding from smart oarholes, and well put-together from clips and tiles.
When you stumble across some sort of alien pod embedded in the ground, the obvious choice is surely to open it. I mean, what could go wrong? Devid VII‘s LEGO scene doesn’t illustrate the consequences of the choice made by this pair of foolhardy characters, but I can’t imagine it’s going to end well. At first glance this scene might seem simple, but then you spot the landscaping — built using the 6-sided “Nexogon” piece. It’s a wonderfully alien-looking crystaline structure, and coupled with the twisting foliage and purple pool, it creates an appropriately other-worldly atmosphere.
The Beastie Boys’ debut album Licensed To Ill is a certifiable classic. Not only is it packed full of awesome tracks, but I can distinctly remember how cool the gatefold sleeve looked when the LP first appeared back in 1986. Brick Flag is also clearly a fan. He’s recreated the iconic cover art in LEGO bricks — a Boeing 727 smashing into a mountainside, and looking more than a little like a stubbed-out cigarette. The model would be great anyway, but the fact it’s such an accurate representation of its inspiration just makes it even better. What’s the time? It’s time to get built.
Here’s a pair of cute and colourful microscale LEGO space racers from Victor. Great shaping, partly due to them being built around one of the new(ish) large-scale Nexo Knight figure torsos, but also from some smart parts choices — small angled plates, sloped tiles, and some curved Technic panels. The colour choices are brilliant, making these guys stand out from the usual crowd of grey spacey stuff. And I love the slight angle on the hull beneath the cockpit — that’s a class little detail. These wouldn’t look out of place in an R-Type or Gradius clone, and in my universe that’s a compliment indeed.
NoVVember is an annual LEGO building event — a celebration of the Vic Viper spaceship style. It’s been a fixture of the LEGO calendar for years now, so it takes something genuinely different to stand out from the Viper crowd. This interesting spaceship from Shamisenfred does exactly that, with striking colour blocking and imaginative use of hot-air balloon pieces. The excellent building continues beyond those eye-catching elements — don’t miss those engine nacelles, the little splashes of gold, and the smart use of stickers. I only wish the photos had been taken against a grey backdrop rather than white — it would have provided a far better contrast to the model.
