Friends is a theme that is usually not on my radar, save for sets like the Downtown Flower and Design Stores (which I picked up for the parts), the new Cafe, and the Community Kitchen. All of which would serve very well in City layouts and MOCs. As much as I like many of the offerings from Friends, I’ve never been one for mini dolls. By no means am I the target demographic for the figures. Leave me to my undercover cops and magazine mascots. With that said, there’s one mini doll that has made its way near the top of my list of favorite LEGO figures for one very important reason: representation. This minidoll is Sara, and she has an ostomy bag. This one detail is a big deal to me, and will be for ostomates and people with other bladder and bowel conditions. What’s an ostomate? What is the...

ode to adventure A finalist in the third series of the BrickLink Designer Program, The Lost City is no small nod to adventurers: it’s a 3,500+ parts ode to exploration, crammed full of all the best hues of green and grey. The Build Process The build process was less tedious than I generally expect from a set of this size. Since it’s ruins, there were always small variations with every iteration of a design. In fact, I would have preferred more repetition, but that was because I was trying to read a detective novel at the same time as I built; but it’s probably safe to bet not many folks will be doing that. While I found it confusing to build the base all in one go (so many slightly different lengths of plates!), designing it as a single section does have one big advantage: it’s remarkably sturdy, making the whole...

September has come and gone, and pumpkins have started lining the fields and your foam-covered lattes. High time for our monthly LEGO community round-up! Take some time out of your busy day and relax with this month’s smorgasbord of interesting articles, deep dives and insightful features from all across the LEGO community! We are lucky to have this many outlets and channels that keep creating incredible content, and these are the best of the month. Here at BrickNerd, we dissected LEGO boxes and went on the hunt for LEGO owls. We sat down with the winner of Vignweek, a Chibi builder, a Hong Kong artist, and looked at the legacy of a LEGO leader. We learned all about GBC, ladybugs and bees, LUG contests and Friendshiptember. And visited Bauspielbahn-Treffen in Germany and a medieval alley, and took a trip to Paul Hetherington’s Bricktacular. We even had kids guess LEGO color names,...

Miniaturizing a large set (either for budget reasons or just because a microscale version looks so darn cute) is a common enough practice among LEGO builders, but most of the time the miniature versions don’t stay at minifig scale. “Eldoradito Fortress” by. Ciamosław Ciamek keeps most of the major features of the larger 10320 Eldorado Fortress (itself a remake of the classic set of the same name), so it stays true to its storied pedigree despite its smaller size. We’ve got the winch, jail, tower, cannons, dock, stone ramp, rowboat, and palm tree. There’s even a solitary guard, though he looks as though he’s probably overdue to be relieved. The only feature that doesn’t make it into the smaller version is the ship (which would be tough to shrink down much further anyway). The post This little fortress is big on details appeared first on The Brothers Brick. Original linkOriginal author:...

BigBrickStan is a new face in the online LEGO community, but already the builder is making waves with splashy builds like this LEGO sea serpent. The Chinese-style dragon uses a lush mix of plant elements as scales. I love the variety of orange wings and claws along the creature’s back, splayed irregularly for a more organic look. An array of points and curls in white make for effective roiling water at the dragon’s base. Most impressive is the head shaping, especially the toothy jaws made of Ninjago bone swords and unicorn horns. The post See this LEGO serpent breach sea at the beach appeared first on The Brothers Brick. Original linkOriginal author: Jake Forbes