Does Your Community Have a LEGO Brick Builders Group?

I recently found an article online about an AFOL who set up a building club for his son and other kids to participate in. Mr. Keith Harmon used some of his own collection as well as donations from others to put the event on. I’ve seen building clubs before and they are often at local libraries or elementary schools. What struck me about this article was some of the pictures. If you look closely, there are a few pictures where adults are building/helping the kids out. That’s awesome to see. What a great opportunity to hang out with your kids and do something fun. I also like the concept of building to a theme. It looks like Mr. Harmon laid down some base plates and the kids were given the task to build up a city around it. My local library just gives kids time to build and then they display the creations around the library afterwards for the month.

Photo from TribLive.com

So I’m turning to you…

Does your town, school, church, community center have a LEGO Builder’s Club?

Is it just for kids? For kids and adults? Just for adults?

Do you have any tips for making it successful?

What keeps people coming back?

Please share your insights in the comments. I’d love to hear what works and what doesn’t work.

Thanks and happy building!

My Bricklink Designer Program Round 4 Picks

I’ve been writing about the Bricklink Designer Program that kicked off in 2023 for a while. I’ve voted on the last three rounds and a few of my picks are being turned into sets in the program. At the time of this post, Round 1 pre-orders just kicked off. Hopefully you survived the 30 minute website outage to grab the set(s) that you were interested in. Round 4 voting just kicked off and ends on 16 February. Like many of the past rounds, there are a lot of modular type buildings, castles, pirates, and some space items. This round also includes a number of Winter Village themed sets which corresponds to palette being released 1 December for a mid-January submission timeframe.

I made a few picks and listed them below. I also made sure to give all five “Love It” votes.

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The first one is American Steam Locomotive by designer stijnd which is made up of 2,143 pieces. The fan community has been pushing for some awesome looking steam engines and I think this one would be a great addition to the lineup. I know trains aren’t the most popular theme, but this one has some great detail and would fit in this program instead of the main lineup through LEGO Icons or Ideas.

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The next pick is called Blooming Bouquets. It’s by designer JackBrickLover and contains 757 pieces. While it’s on the smaller side for a modular building, I think every city could use some smaller buildings and our wallets could use some smaller sets on the cheaper side. This one still has a lot of great details and is very bright and has a good mix of colors. I like the flower on the top of the building with the butterfly.

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Fire Truck is by designer KingCreations and packs a lot of detail into a build with only 412 pieces. The City theme gives us a ton of fire vehicles with new ones released each year, but we have yet to get one with this much detail and functionality. This would go great in any City layout and even includes two minifigures. As an added bonus, 412 pieces shouldn’t break the bank. Maybe $45? Please vote for this one like I did!

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I had to throw in a building/modular. Here’s the Old City Canal by lukreate. It contains 3,742 pieces and is the front facade of a section of a city around a canal. While it’s not a true modular, it still has a lot of fun details and can be rearranged to give it some different views. Downsides are the high piece count (high price) and a bunch of stickers, but I think it looks pretty cool!

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My last pick is The Northern Ambassador Limited by NewEletia45. This one contains 2,272 pieces. The engine looks pretty similar to the the Emerald Night or at least the wheel assembly looks similar. I like the addition of two passenger cars as well. I doubt we’d get the fans to vote for two, but I’ll hedge my bets and pick two while really hoping for one (and I’ll probably get none, but that’s okay).

Please vote for your favorites! Happy building!

One of my Round 3 Picks Will Get Made (2023 Bricklink Designer Program)

Somehow I’m trying to will the crowd to select the sets I think are cool. So far it’s worked on one out of every five nominations I’ve made. Maybe I need to try and think like the crowd? Anyways, you can see my round 3 selections here. Once again, only one of the five sets I liked made it through. Let’s take a look at the final picks for this round.

Camping Adventure by user name thepresident14 contains 643 pieces. This one is a smaller set and hopefully that means not as expensive (hint, hint LEGO if you’re reading this). I think there are a lot of camping/camper related sets already so I wasn’t a big fan of this one. It could go well with #21338-1: A Frame Cabin though as the trees look similar.

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Forest Stronghold by username Krackenator contains 3,208 pieces. The Castle fans had yet another win. Don’t we have enough grey sets with the Star Wars line? Okay, you have to admit this one looks cool. The two structures with the bridge and then rope at the top to swing across. There’s some creative stuff in this one. The piece count is sure to make this one cost an arm and a leg though.

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Harbormaster’s Office by username Rich_Herbert contains 2,395 pieces. To me, this one was similar to #21310-1: Old Fishing Store. Maybe it’s a chance for folks who missed that one to grab something similar? I like some of the details and what I assume will be stickers. You might be able to connect it to the Old Fishing Store as well which could be fun as a dock scene.

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Lost City by username letsgolegobrick contains 3,332 pieces. This one is a very detailed build with some cool looking techniques (the roof colors are awesome). You could see LEGO doing a whole theme with this one. I wasn’t a huge fan of this set myself, but it is an impressive build. With the number of pieces, it’ll be a pricey build too.

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The Art of Chocolate by username Brickester contains 2,574 pieces. This was the original pick that I had. I’m a big fan of this one as it’s something out of the ordinary from what we normally see. Plus you can use it in your Winter Village or with your modular buildings.

Well done to all the builders. I look forward to seeing the final products! Happy building!

My Bricklink Designer Program Round 3 Picks

This isn’t my first post on the Bricklink Designer Program so I’m not going to go into all the details again. I’m hoping you’re up to speed by now. Voting ends on 20 October 2023 so go cast your votes now! The link is here.

And as a shameless plug, while you’re at Bricklink, you can check out the Bricks for Bricks Bricklink store to see what retired sets and minifigures are there. .

My top five picks to become sets are below (not in any particular order). For the past two rounds, I’ve gone one for five so let’s see if everyone agrees with me or not this round.

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American Steam Locomotive

By Bricklink User: stijnd

Contains 2,141 pieces

As a train fan, I’d love to see more trains. This rendition of a steam locomotive is incredible and would look great going around your CITY layout. LEGO won’t produce trains that we want so let’s create some as a fan community. I haven’t seen a video of this one working, but it would look great even as a display piece or in a rail yard.

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Octan Highway Truck

By Bricklink User: el_presidente0

Contains 531 pieces

The Octan brand is pretty classic and I think this set represents the brand well. Plus this one doesn’t have a ton of pieces so the cost should be lower. Maybe they’ll be able to add a logo into the final design. Even if it’s a sticker.

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Picturesque Italy

By Bricklink User: levsi54

Contains 3,908 pieces

There were a lot of modulars in this round again. I didn’t want to pick a bunch again, but I really like this one. It has a good mix of buildings and would help to make your CITY look better with the addition of three well designed buildings instead of just one.

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The Art of Chocolate

By Bricklink User: Bricester

Contains 2,574 pieces

This one could fit in a CITY, in a Winter Village, or just on it’s own. There are a bunch of play features and it is a great display piece. I think it would look great if you lit it up too. It’s fun to see a different theme as we haven’t seen something like this before.

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Two-Seat Biplane 2.0

By Bricklink User: EmanueLego

Contains 2,268 pieces

I recommended a biplane before and I’ll try again. I like this design. It’s a great display piece and it looks like a fun build.

BrickCon 2023 - Attending Virtually Was Awesome

I attended BrickCon virtually from 7 through 10 September 2023 and had a blast as a third time attendee. This year I applied for, interviewed, and was selected to be a part of the virtual staff. In the past, I have done posts about all the activities I participated in. This year, my focus was more on making sure everything went smoothly in virtual land so I don’t have too much to post about specific presentations. I do have a bunch to share though.

Con Printed Program

This year’s theme was “Journeys” as the convention moved from it’s prior location in of many years in WA to the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA. I had never been to the previous location, but we got a virtual tour of the new location and it looked like a great facility. The wifi there was better too which helped for Zoom connections.

Virtually we started with to tour of the facility, we got to see MOCs being set up, and we got an insider look at the Swag bags and convention model.

As mentioned, I didn’t participate in a ton of presentations, but I did get to participate in a number of the games. We had a 150 piece free build to a theme (pick any 150 pieces in your collection and build to the theme in 1 hour). We also had attendees go out and get set #31135-1: Vintage Motorcycle. We did a number of games with this set to include a speed build of an alternate set found on rebrickable.com, a sock build of one of the models, a sock unbuild of the main model, an alternate build with your own background using any parts in 45 minutes, and finally the free build with your own collection of parts to a theme within 1.5 hours. They were a lot of fun to host and watch and I think the participants enjoyed themselves. We had a lot of talented and creative builders.

One new thing we did this year was hold a Virtual AFOL Spotlight. This was an opportunity to either share pictures or take your web camera and show some builds you were working on or sets you had on display. A bunch of us had a great time chatting and showing off bricks. Hopefully we can continue this event into the future.

Screen shot of Robein Sather’s opening slide from his keynote presentation

This year, the keynote speaker was Robin Sather. He is a LEGO Certified Professional from Canada and a super talented builder. He brought a bunch of large scale Duplo builds to the convention (and there are some videos out there of him crashing it after the show ended). His presentation went though the history of AFOLs, his building history, and his involvement in LEGO Masters New Zealand. Below is a picture of one of his Duplo builds from his presentation. Overall, his talk was great and well received by the virtual attendees.

Picture of a build by Robin Sather from his BrickCon 2023 presentation.

One of the highlights I always enjoy is the swag and merch from BrickCon. Here’s a quick rundown of everything I ordered.

Here’s the convention t-shirt. I thought the logo was great. I like the sea monster in there.

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There was another string back pack this year to carry all of the swag. The biggest item was a notebook with a pen and some sticky notes inside. It says it’s for travel plans to conventions and to put down ideas for future MOCs.

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This year included two stickers. One from the Brothers Brick and the other being the BrickCon logo.

Also included was a lanyard from Bricks and Minifigs and then a retractable brick separator clip which was awesome.

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We got a few items from vendors to include a pack from Brick Warriors with some custom minifigure hair pieces, some printed bricks from the Brick Chick, and some custom capes/aprons from Cape Madness.

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Similar to last year, we got a buildable BrickCon logo. Then we got some parts for trading. At the convention attendees can swap parts. As a virtual attendee, you just keep them all unless you have friends to trade with.

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Lastly, there was a small build of a minifigure scale moving dolly, a bunch of printed parts from various sets, a custom printed tile with the BrickCon ‘23 logo, another BrickCon custom printed part for a box to carry with the dolly, and then my printed bricks that I ordered.

I also purchased the BrickCon convention model, but I’ll do a separate review on that one another time.

Sorry, not a detailed post for this year. I highly recommend you attend next year. It was only $25 to register for the virtual session so it’s pretty affordable. Hopefully the price remains the same next year. You can follow updates for 2024 and sign up for the mailing list here. I hope to see you in virtual attendance in 2024!
Happy building!

Attend the Longest Running LEGO Fan Convention From Your Home

The AFOL portion for BrickCon 2023 is coming up fast. It will be 7 through 10 September 2023. If you’re like me, you’d love to go in person, but the airline ticket, hotel costs, and transportation costs of going in person would really eat into your budget. The good news is you can still attend virtually. You can buy your ticket here and still participate in presentations, get a live tour of the MOCs on display, play the games with other attendees, be eligible for prizes, and buy the convention merchandise (convention model, swag bag, t-shirts, etc.). Registration is $25 for all the access. There’s still time to sign up.

Hope to see you there! Happy building!

LEGO House® - Online Fan Event - AFOL to LEGO® Designer

I attended and reported on the last LEGO House® Virtual Fan Day back in September 2020. There may have been one or two that I missed, but there is another virtual fan event happening this Friday, 26 March 2021. It is titled “My way from AFOL to LEGO® designer.” It will be held from 6 PM to 8 PM CET so a good time for me here in Germany, but not so great if you are working back in the US. Sadly the event is not free and it was limited to 100 people. I was lucky enough to get in at a cost of ~$32 (it was priced in DKK). It will be hosted by a Norwegian journalist and AFOL named Are Heiseldal.

The event will feature three designers: Marcos Bessa, Milan Reindl, and Justin Ramsden. Marcos has done a lot of Super Heroes sets, but more recently I built #75978-1: Diagon Alley that he designed. Milan has mainly designed for Technic. I have not built or reviewed any of his sets on this site. Justin Ramsden has designed for Super Heroes (#76057-1), Harry Potter (#71043-1), Ideas (#21306-1), Monkey King, and recently the Chinese Traditional Festivals (#80107-1).

Picture from legohouse.com

Left to Right - Marcos, Milan, Justin

I will do my best to take some good notes and maybe grab a screen shot or two for a future blog post. Maybe I’ll “see” you there?

Happy building!

BrickCon 2020 - My Experience

I posted about some of the swag I received and a bit on BrickCon 2020 here. This post will focus on the content. I attended a Brickworld Virtual back in May 2020 and that was a number of online rooms that yoiu could go into and out of at will. There were a few presentations throughout the day as well. BrickCon was a lot more than that. They had multiple sessions scheduled every hour, a Discord server running full time, Zoom rooms to hang out in, and lots of prizes throughout. All of the MOCs on display were on a private Flickr group page for viewing. While I would have preferred the opportunity to go in person, meet people, ask questions of MOC builders, and not be stuck behind my computer, the experience was definitely worth it in a COVID-19 context. Here’s a run through of some of the events I attended.

Tiago Catarino is a former LEGO Designer turned YouTuber from Portugal. You can visit his YouTube channel here. Now he posts small builds that you can do yourself with minimal pieces. He also has a few videos on what it was like to work at LEGO and why he quit (spoiler alert… it was not because he hated LEGO). Tiago had two sessions. The first was a Q&A for registered AFOLs only where he gave a short presentation and then people could ask him questions. The second was a build with Tiago session open to the public. I attended the registered AFOL session. Tiago shared some great info about working at LEGO, being a YouTuber, and some of his other experiences. Here’s a screen shot of him below.

The next one I attended was a public session where Stuart Harris presented to the public. If you don’t know him, he’s the lead designer for the LEGO House®. Stuart gave a presentation about how the LEGO House® was developed and built. Then he gave a description of each of the zones and what you can do there. Below are a few pictures from the presentation that I grabbed. The first is one of Stuart’s creations/Stuart working at the LEGO House®. The second is a brick built model of the Minifig Cafe.

Another one I attended was with registered AFOLs only and was a presentation by Gaute Munch (Lego Product Technology Director) and Flemming Jepsen (from the Powered Up team) on Powered UP. I am not an expert in this area by any means so a lot of the conversation was a bit over my cranium, but it was interesting to here. My experience has been motorizing the Crocodile Locomotive, but there is a lot that LEGO has in the works. Just after BrickCon, LEGO released a new version of the app which allows customization. They are working on a rechargeable battery box, new software, and a bunch more. Gaute and Flemming took some tough questions from the audience and handled them very well. I’m glad I participated in this one. The screen shot below is one of the slides with Gaute presenting.

Another event was a keynote where Andrew Becraft (The Brothers Brick Founder and Editor-in-Chief) interviewed Skip Kodak (Executive Vice President, Americas Market Group - LEGO). This was an interesting conversation covering a range of topics from sustainability to COVID-19 impacts for the company, to the adult focused products and lines. I’m glad I attended this one and thought it was great that LEGO offered up someone from upper management to participate.

Throughout the event, a number of AFOLs got on to share their MOCs. One of them was with Ben Smith who lives in the UK. He builds in the space theme and has some pretty impressive MOCs. You can see what he builds on his Flickr page. The screen shot below shows a classic space set, but he had a modern take on it and some other larger space crafts to show off. The benefits of having a virtual event is to get folks to participate in other countries to include people like Ben (and me!).

LEGO Designer Chris McVeigh gave a presentation and Q&A. If you aren’t familiar with Chris and his work, he designed the Brick Sketches™ and the latest Winter Village set the #10275-1: Elf Clubhouse. Chris shared his AFOL experience, how he was hired by LEGO, and then some details on designing the Winter Village set.

I sadly did not get to see this full presentation, but Graham Hancock gave a presentation on LEGO’s foray into catering to adult fans. If you’re not familiar with Graham, he run Brick Fanatics and is the deputy editor for Blocks Magazine. The part of the presentation I saw had details on the history of sets focused for adults. Some I remember and some I hadn’t heard of. And of course some that I wish I had.

I also attended a presentation and Q&A with Henrik Andersen. Henrik is a LEGO Designer who might be best known for his recent work on #75252-1: Imperial Star Destroyer. He’s been with the company for a while and showed some of the other sets he worked on an parts he developed. He went through the details of how they develop parts and showed what works and what doesn’t work. Most notably (for me anyway) I learned he was the developer of the cheese slope.

One last presentation I attended was with George Patelis. George lives in Greece and goes by PatGeo313 on his YouTube channel and Flickr gallery. He made a short video on some of his latest MOCs on YouTube here. Definitely check his work out as he has some impressive stuff.

That was a quick glimpse into my BrickCon 2020 experience. I had a lot of fun even if it wasn’t in person. I hope I can attend again next year and maybe some day get there in person.

Until then, happy building!

My First Convention Brick

Production was delayed a bit, but I finally received the 1x8 Brickworld Virtual Con brick that I ordered from the May 2020 Brickworld Virtual. Brickworld held another Virtual Con on 27 June 2020 that I was unable to attend, but it looked like there were some interesting events.

The next Brickworld Virtual isn’t until 31 October 2020. If you want more details or information, go check them out on the web.

Happy building!

Bricks Supporting the Australian Bushfires - Your Chance to Help!

If you haven’t been watching the news or reading the news online, there is a massive fire burning in Australia. This is their summertime (for us northern hemisphere folks in the cold) so it is hot and dry which has not helped. The damage and destruction have been pretty awful and it is still ongoing.

Sometimes you see things like this and think how awful it is, but then you move on with your life since the news you are reading about is happening very far from you. Well some members of the LEGO Fan Community in Australia are trying to make a difference. Thanks to the BrickBlogger.com for sharing the post that alerted me of this effort.

Here’s what you need to know…

Jay’s Brick Blog is a LEGO Recognized Fan Media site run by an AFOL in Australia. Jay and some of his fellow Aussies have reached into their collections to hold a raffle. For each dollar you donate to support the Red Cross through his link, you get one chance to win some pretty cool sets. Not all are available internationally, but that’s okay. It’s awesome to see AFOLs getting together to do some good around the world.

If you’d like to support Jay’s effort, you can go to his Blog here to donate.

The raffle will be held on 12 January 2019 so support now if you want to be a part of the raffle.

If you’re not sure about giving to someone you don’t know in another country, Jay also posted a link to the Red Cross so you can donate to them directly.

Thank you Jay and fellow AFOLs for giving!