Tag Archives: Kimberly Giffen

Crafty AFOLs leave their minifigs (and us) in stitches [Minfig Monday]

Since we started spotlighting minifig creations again on Minifig Mondays, we’ve been introduced to so many talented AFOLs. After covering desert sands and dieselpunk in our last installments, maybe it’s time to welcome some cozier fig creations into the mix? Grab your knitting needles and garden shears, as we’re going to explore DIY minifig fashions!  The fist time the brothers brick featured minifigs wearing crocheted clothes was back in 2006! Sadly, that was the only time. Let’s fix this with a Minifig Monday dedicated to minfigs dressed in knitted and floral clothing! Because hobbies are better when you let them mingle.

Kim Schol is a LEGO photographer from the Netherlands who sets her minifig subjects in dioramas that blend LEGO with nature and crafts. Kim dresses her minifig in a fantastically elegant skirt made of real flower petals. This fairy tale scene is one of my favorites in the way that LEGO foliage mixes with seed tufts and moss to create a magical space. Here’s a glimpse of how the mix of materials came together to make a scene.

Flowers and crochet and minifigs, oh my! The tour continues after the fold

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Building and growing together: An AFOL mother’s journey [Feature]

In celebration of Mothers Day and the many AFOLs who became mothers or mothers who discovered LEGO through their children, we present this guest post from our own Kimberly Giffen.

The day arrives when the oldest child receives her first LEGO set, and the time for endless hours of building with your children has come. As a family with an AFOL mother and four kids, so many hours have been spent on building. We build together, they move on to something else, and I continue building.

Kimberly’s story continues

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BrickCon 2023 Best in Show winner Kimberly Giffen talks about her LEGO rendition of the Silver Pavilion [Exclusive]

A little more than 11 months ago, I wrote up a beautiful LEGO tea house by my very talented LUG-mate Kimberly Giffen. That build, The Giffen Gardens, won Best in Show at BrickCon 2022. And here I am, after another BrickCon, pleased to say that Kimberly was able to repeat her achievement and win the Best in Show once again with a recreation of the Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji) from Kyoto, Japan. I had a chance to talk with Kimberly after the convention about her work, and was able to learn a lot about the model and her process.

Read on about the Silver Pavilion below!

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The Brothers Brick LEGO Creation of the Year 2022: Giffen Gardens by Kimberly Giffen [News]

If every LEGO creation is a journey, The Brothers Brick team of editors and contributors have made thousands of them during 2022. From bizarre distant planets to heartwarming personal stories, each build is its own world — yet build with the very same LEGO bricks. And when debating and voting on the most best creation, the most memorable one, our team unanimously found themselves longing for something serene, calm and restful. Among the brilliant eight creations on this year’s shortlist, it is Kimberly Giffen who stole our hearts. Her enchanting Giffen Gardens is The Brothers Brick LEGO Creation of the Year 2022.

Click to see more photos of the LEGO Creation of the Year 2022

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The Giffen Gardens is an award-winning LEGO build [Exclusive]

Over the last several months, I’ve been able to admire the individual pieces of this gorgeous LEGO creation by fellow SPSLUG member Kimberly Giffen. But when all the parts came together this past weekend at BrickCon, my jaw hit the floor! The build is alive with so many textures, from the roof and cobbled tan walls of the house to the stone-paved path around it. Each of the dozens of flowers adorning the grounds here feels unique, a single beautiful piece in the larger puzzle. And the variety is outstanding, bounding between building techniques with ease. In this pocket, we have rockwork with studs exposed, but an inch to the left explores the patterns made with this pentagonal tile in dark blue.

Enter the garden grounds below…

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