Tag Archives: Christmas

Have yourself a tiny little Christmas

This festive microscale build all came from finding a white LEGO lever loose in a drawer and thinking the round end would make a nice bobble on a Santa hat. It snowballed from there, so to speak — once I got Mr Claus built he really needed some Elves. And then they needed some surrounding scenery. Next year, I think there might be a whole North Pole village at this scale…

This is obviously a stripped-back, simple build, but I think it’s interesting that it would have been impossible to do until relatively recently without cutting bricks. The white lever sits inside Santa’s hat, but it would be too long to dangle fully in there if it weren’t for the availability of the “Apollo stud” (1×1 round plates with holes) in yellow and white which make up Santa’s head.

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Rudolph the rad-fuelled reindeer

I have no idea if Mitsuru Nikaido‘s mechanoid LEGO reindeer is really atomic-powered, but it would seem appropriate. How else would a robotic ungulate have the sort of power and endurance to traverse the world with heavy sacks of gifts in tow?

The posing of the reindeer robot (reinbot?) is excellent, as is the level of greebly detail suggesting working gubbins and machinery. Don’t miss the use of minifig gun parts to create the antlers. It’s easy to overlook the sleigh alongside the mechanical beast — but that would be a shame, as it’s a great little build, managing to look futuristic, functional, and festive all at the same time.

What’s this?!

“What is this? There’s children throwing snowballs, instead of throwing heads, they’re busy building toys and absolutely no one’s dead.” Now that you’ve got one of the catchiest Christmas songs ever stuck in your head, take a look at Cesar Soares‘s amazing Nightmare Before Christmas LEGO sled, helmed by none other than Jack Skellington and his faithful ghost-dog, Zero.

This Halloween, we featured Cesar’s incredible Nightmare Mayor-mobile and now that it’s nearly Christmas there’s no better way to celebrate than by kidnapping the Sandy Claws, taking over his job, and delivering gruesome toys to all the children of the world. Like Cesar’s prior Nightmare build, this one is incredibly accurate to the movie. In addition to Cesar’s great characters, I love the rickety-ness of the launch ramp and that each skelly-reindeer is unique.

Santa Claus is tumbling to town

When the Christmas presents absolutely positively definitely need to get there on time, you need Chak hei Mok‘s Festive LEGO Tumbler. No blizzard or broken bridge, or Joker ambush or GCPD roadblock is going to stop Batman delivering the Yuletide cheer. However, I doubt DC’s greatest hero is going to be hugely impressed with whichever kid asked for a Captain America shield…

Pentatonix’ Christmas classic “Up on the Housetop” is a VR-enabled LEGO movie [Video]

Famous a capella group Pentatonix gets LEGO-ified in their new music video for the Christmas classic “Up on the Housetop.” The video uses YouTube’s new 360° functionality, meaning you can pan around in the video to see in every direction. While the graphic fidelity won’t be winning any awards, being able to see what’s “behind” the camera is pretty cool even without VR, and will look even better if you have Google Cardboard or another VR device.

Classic LEGO nutcracker brings holiday cheer

German builder Robert Heim has recreated the classic king nutcracker in LEGO, complete with gold crown, upturned mustache, and a mouth that opens with a lever on his back. But my favorite detail in Robert’s creation is the trio of pieces lying next to the tall nutcracker — perfect use of a LEGO globe and brown minifig head.

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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Interview with The LEGO Christmas Ornaments Book author Chris McVeigh

Canadian brick artist Chris McVeigh is one of our favorite builders, and No Starch Press is one of our favorite LEGO-friendly book publishers, so their new book The LEGO Christmas Ornaments Book: 15 Designs to Spread Holiday Cheer is a match made in holiday heaven.

No Starch released the book back in September, but between a lengthy overseas trip for work followed by BrickCon, I simply dropped the ball — my sincerest apologies to Chris and our friends at No Starch for the delay. But the good news is that it’s now officially the Christmas season, so I guess this is even more timely? Enough excuses. On to the interview!

The Brothers Brick: We first featured you here on The Brothers Brick way back in 2008, when you were taking pictures of chipmunks with action figures. When did you start focusing more exclusively on LEGO?

Chris McVeigh: It happened rather quickly! Pairing Star Wars action figures and chipmunks was a fun challenge, and it motivated me to do more photography of action figures and other toys. Unfortunately, Hasbro wasn’t producing any play sets (aside from large ships), so it fell to me to create my own sets and backdrops for action figure photos. This was a rather time-consuming task that ultimately prevented me from getting on with toy photography.

Click through for our full interview with Chris McVeigh

The Brothers Brick “Create-a-calendar” Contest [News]

The holiday season is underway, and for many LEGO fans that means it’s time to crack open the first door on their official LEGO Advent calendars. This year LEGO once again offers the choice of three calendar themes: Town, Friends, and Star Wars. The Brothers Brick will even be joining in the fun, as each day we reveal the daily mini-models from all three sets.

If you could wish for any LEGO Advent calendar theme, what would it be? Ninjago? Space? Wild West? Well, we’d like to know. But we don’t want to you just tell us, we want you to show us in The Brothers Brick “Create-a-calendar” Contest. Simply choose your dream theme for an Advent calendar, and build some example mini-models to illustrate it. The contest runs from now through December 17th, and we’ll announce the winners on Christmas Day.

Click here to learn more about the contest

The weather outside is frightful, but the microscale’s delightful

I don’t know about everywhere else, but this weekend saw winter begin to take hold in Scotland. Appropriately enough, along come two lovely little LEGO builds which perfectly capture the chill in the air. First up, IamKritch‘s cabin looks like a great place to sit out the blizzard. The trees and the frozen stream are smart, but it’s the simple use of a brown grille brick for the cabin’s log walls which grabs the attention.

And then there’s Brick Blue Wren‘s wonderful winter diorama. I like the variety of techniques used for the trees, and the curved backdrop and base evoking the shape of a snow globe. The color scheme properly pops off the page, particularly those hefty snowflakes against the blue sky. A few more models like this and I’ll be all set for Christmas.

LEGO Nutcrackers for your holiday chestnuts

I’m sure many of you have your chestnuts roasting by the open fire. Those of us NOT in Florida or the northeast might even have jack frost nipping at our noses. The Cascade Mountains have certainly made up for last winter with nearly 12 feet of snow in the last 25 days.

Julius von Brunk gives us these festive, whimsical nutcrackers to join in all of our festivities. Like real nutcrackers, these open and close their jaws by means of a lever. You too can have these as part of your traditions, as he’s been kind enough to provide a tutorial on Instructables.

Tragic end for a snowman

It’s a tough world right now for a snowman. Is anyone forecast for snow tomorrow? Rocky Mountains, put your hand down. We’re talking about everyone else, who are going to experience the great joy of a warm, sunny Christmas morning. As a former Florida resident, I’m so, so sorry.

Also, please someone tell Dorothy that tornado season might not be over.

I could never quite get behind a Florida Christmas, and this snowman very clearly couldn’t either. Fortunately, Earl Ware was on hand to capture the snowman’s fate.

Someone might want to tell Olaf.