Tag Archives: hobby

Collecting Canada’s finest stamp

LEGO builder Philippe Moisan demonstrates some serious mosaic chops with the Canadian Bluenose postage stamp. If you see one of these affixed to your post, you can consider yourself lucky. The stamp was first issued in 1929 and depicts a fishing schooner called Bluenose. It has been called “Canada’s Finest Stamp” and is a favorite among collectors. One individual stamp can garner quite a bit of money but a complete sheet of 100 had auctioned for for US $52,580 in 2017! Even barring its history and value, this LEGO mosaic is chock full of exquisite detail and textures evoking the hand-painted blue tiles popular in many Mediterranean countries. It was built for a contest going on over at QuéLUG, making it a lovely Canadian creation indeed.

Bluenose stamp

Some assembly required indeed

I was an avid model kit builder as a teenager and young adult. There’s one hobby that brought my model building days to an abrupt end and that involved the rediscovery of LEGO. Still, it’s neat to see a builder like Kale Frost illustrate the love for my old hobby with pieces from my newer one. The cutting mat, paint tubes, pencils, the Exacto blade, even the plastic parts on the sprue are all built from LEGO. With sanding, gluing, and painting there certainly were a lot of steps involved in building models. I still have a few kits in my art room closet. Perhaps this might inspire me to rediscover the hobby. If not, it at least provided fond memories of building models in the basement while listening to my parents’ Black Sabbath tapes. Yes, I said tapes! And Black Sabbath. And parents.

Some assembly required