A Chilean LEGO Certified Store has appeared to reveal the rumored LEGO Harry Potter The Burrow – Collectors’ Edition (76437). The official information on the set is still unclear but it has been reported to have 2,405 pieces and include minifigures of Harry Potter and the whole Weasley family including Ron, Ginny, Arthur, Molly, Fred, George, Percy, Bill, and Charlie. The official announcement should be coming very soon. **Via Jay’s Brick Blog** The post LEGO Harry Potter The Burrow – Collectors’ Edition (76437) First Look appeared first on The Brick Fan. Original linkOriginal author: Allen "Tormentalous" Tran

July has come to an end, Summer is halfway over, but fret not, there’s plenty to enjoy! So wherever you are – be it on vacation on a beach or on your couch in the living room – we’ve got a sizzling platter for you, full of interesting articles, deep dives and insightful features from all across the LEGO community! We are lucky to have this many outlets and channels creating incredible content, and these are the best of the month. Here at BrickNerd, we followed the Summer Olympics and Bio-Cup and learned all about GBC mechanisms and about color in fantasy builds. We customized Speed Champions sets, made custom cloth flags, prepped for SHIPtember and abandoned instructions outright. We had Christmas in July, took a LEGO set into the pool and traveled to Scotland and around the world. And we celebrated a community champion, a LEGO train layout, and LEGO Club...

When most LEGO fans build sets, they follow the instructions to a T. But there are a few of us who enjoy making alternative creations from a set, just to see what we can build with the bricks provided. Today, just like before, we are going to do just that. Two BrickNerd contributors were given the opportunity to fiddle around with the newest additions to the LEGO Botanical Collection, 10368 Chrysanthemum and 10369 Plum Blossom. So what can they do with such small sets? It’s time for Will and Josh to start plotting with some plants! Let’s turn it over to them in their words… Crazy Chrysanthemums - Will Hafner A few weeks back, BrickNerd received an offer to monkey around with some new sets provided by LEGO, and I tossed my brick in the ring to be considered to rebuild one of the new Botanical sets. Lo and behold, I...

Today’s guest article comes from Caleb Wagoner, a car and sportscar racing enthusiast and AFOL from Virginia. You can find him online on Instagram. Today we’re going to be taking a look at two LEGO Speed Champion sets, 76935 NASCAR Next Gen Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 and 76934 Ferrari F40 Supercar. While the sets you can buy from the shelf starting August 1st are great, I thought it’d be fun to mod them to make each one a little more special. So drivers, start your engines, and let’s get racing! 76935 NASCAR Next Gen Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 In the last couple of years, NASCAR has changed their cars to be modern racecars, and this set reflects that. I don’t watch much NASCAR myself, but I do watch a lot of endurance racing. NASCAR fielded a modified Next Gen Camaro in 2023 for the Le Mans 24-hour race, so that seems like a...

I used to MOC a lot. In the olden days. I am, by trade, a professional parent, and while even under optimal conditions, that entails being on-call 24/7 with a Sisyphean list of tasks. I would usually carve out some LEGO time in the day when my people were all in school and the worst of the fires had been put out. I’d let my brain dive deep into the creative pool and build. At least, that's how it worked in the “before times.” Minifig me at my minifig house. We’re here all the time. In March 2020, we suddenly all had more time. But also all my people were now home all the time. All. The. Time. All. The. Time. So, yeah, “Lots of extra hours in the day!” But most of that time is “short attention span theater.” Ask me how many times I’ve been brought up to code...

“Woah! You do NOT look like what I expected!” This is the greeting that I received after finally meeting one of a handful of Bionicle/constraction builders displaying in-person at Brickworld Chicago 2022. At LEGO conventions, it’s fairly common for people to mistake any grey-haired person like myself for being the parent of one of the displaying builders—as opposed to actually being one of the displayers. In addition, some people still envision the stereotypical Bionicle/constraction builder as being a young male teenager, who spends as much time debating Bionicle canon in online forums as they do actually building with Bionicle. Receiving this reaction after meeting another male Bionicle builder means to me that there’s still work to be done in changing this paradigm—even within the Bionicle community. More and more builders from varied backgrounds have been trying their hand at building with Bionicle/constraction parts. It is evident that annual community-building contests like...

Once again, the festival of sport is upon us. The Summer Olympics are here! In Paris, no less, which hosted the modern Summer Olympics previously in 1900 and 1924. France has hosted three Winter Olympics as well, including the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix in 1924, Grenoble in 1968, and Albertville in 1992. Source: LA Times A whole deep-dive article on LEGO sets tied to Paris could easily be created. Everything from UCS Christmas trees, cathedrals, and other Paris-themed sets are ripe for analysis; but so are sports-based sets! Given the global event occurs only every four years, Olympic-themed LEGO builds tend to be sparse. But today we are searching faster, higher and stronger to bring you a glimpse of what is out there when it comes to some of the lesser-known Olympic sports. To start us off, the French LEGO forum Brick Pirate is having a contest with some excellent...

It’s Christmas in July—which means there’s only five months until Christmas! A staple of the Christmas season is the winter village, and LEGO winter villages are no stranger to the season. In light of Christmas in July, I wanted to discuss the work of one man who offers one of the most accomplished winter villages I’ve seen: Alexandre Lejeune, aka Alex Winter Village. Beginnings Sam: Hi Alex, can you introduce yourself? How long have you been in the LEGO hobby? Alex: Hi Sam! Thanks for your interest in my work. I’m Alex, 43, from the Gard, south of France. I’m an SNCF TGV ticket inspector, and I've been a full-time guitarist in the Ska Punk Metal band Les Kroutes since 1999. I've been building with Danish bricks since I was 8. Time flies! Sam: How did you get started on this diorama? How long did it take? Alex: Despite a slow...

I can’t count the times that LEGO builders or even the general public see an awesome GBC (Great Ball Contraption) layout at an event and want to make one themselves… but just don’t know how to get started. So today we are going back to the basics, breaking down GBC modules into their core mechanisms to show how to make balls move. We’ll explore some of my favorite and most frequently used mechanisms found in almost any GBC module. These core mechanisms enable a wide range of functionalities for transporting balls upwards, and each can be customized to fit whatever your brain can imagine. Even the most complex modules can be broken down into basic movements and mechanisms. There are certainly more ways of moving balls, but these five are the most common in my experience. Slider-Crank Mechanism Slider crank mechanism by bricksngears While there are several variants of this mechanism,...

Castle… If you’re like me, your first thought upon hearing that word is a giant gray structure with maybe the occasional bit of green for terrain. Castle and gray have become synonymous terms, which is a shame as the castle genre really has so much more to offer. Now, I’m not saying that giant gray castles are bad — far from it. However, it is nice to get some variety and see some more unique and vibrant colors incorporated. Last year, I modified set 10316 Rivendell in the style of LEGO Elves (which you can read here). I barely changed anything besides the colors, and yet the difference between the original set and my modified version is drastic. It really got me thinking about just how big of a difference color can make and the tone it sets. I thought it would be worth diving deeper into the use of color...