Welcome to Day 3 of our LEGO Advent Calendar countdown. Each day, we’ll reveal the four mini-builds from the LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Friends, and LEGO City 2019 advent calendars along with commentary from The Brothers Brick team. If you’re opening one (or more) of these advent calendars along with us, we’ve made sure the pictures and commentary on each day’s models will be behind a jump so we don’t accidentally ruin the surprise. What will we see on day three? For Day 3, we have a pair of snowy trees from Harry Potter and a First Order Stormtrooper from Star Wars. Dave: These tiny Christmas trees are so simple and effective, and two is certainly better than one! I love the brown travis bricks too–sooo infinitely usable. And it looks like this poor First Order Stormtrooper finally escaped the battle from 75225 Elite Praetorian Guard Battle Pack where...

LEGO element 2417, the 6×5 plant leaf, is a part that lends itself well to multiple uses. Many go the traditional route and use it as part of a tree. Sometimes it winds up as part of an alien creature. My favorite uses, though, are when a builder takes a bunch of them and creates complex patterns. Azurekingfisher is a builder who has shown great skill in this area before. But today, they take that skill-set and apply it at an entirely new level. In White Bird the geometric shapes have been joined with sculptural elements to create a bird that is simply stunning. The bird’s body has some nice part usage as well, bringing in textures from parts like open-stud 1×1 round plates for the eyes, and a turntable base on the chest. The touch of gold from the tooth plates as claws adds just a touch of opulence to...

Versatile as LEGO bricks are, sometimes there are pieces that are just…challenging…to work with. There are common but annoying parts like big ugly rock pieces. There are wacky things like a rare Duplo stand from a short-lived licensed theme. Whatever the case, it takes a special kind of builder to take these elements and see them in new ways. A kind of part mastery. Some might even say….Jedi mastery. For example, LEGO builder Logan W. has taken the normally single-purpose Bionicle Midak Skyblaster cannon and incorporated it into an impressive replica of Darth Vader’s iconic lightsaber. The cannon forms the emitter shroud, while the hilt is made from strips of black tile connected to octagonal bar frames and a Technic racing wheel rim. Logan was inspired by a Two-Piece-Only lightsaber created by The Igzer. The two pieces in use there are the aforementioned Midak Skyblaster cannon and a bit of Bionicle...

Welcome to Day 2 of our LEGO Advent Calendar countdown. Each day, we’ll reveal the four mini-builds from the LEGO Harry Potter, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Friends, and LEGO City 2019 advent calendars along with commentary from The Brothers Brick team. If you’re opening one (or more) of these advent calendars along with us, we’ve made sure the pictures and commentary on each day’s models will be behind a jump so we don’t accidentally ruin the surprise. The anticipation is killing us! For Day 2, we have the Hogwarts Express from Harry Potter and Kylo Ren’s Shuttle from Star Wars. Dave: This is what the LEGO advent calendars should aspire to be: two fantastic micro-models that are instantly recognizable. The Hogwarts Express train is spot on and could be a mini version of 75955. The red 1×1 curved top element has only ever been used in 41379 Heartlake City Restaurant (side note:...

Inspired by the book Walden; or Life in the Woods, Andrea Lattanzio escapes from the fast food restaurants and gas stations (and futuristic rovers!) of the modern world into the wilds through his latest build. I wonder if Thoreau, the main character of the aforementioned book, would choose LEGO as his outlet instead of escaping to the wild if he had lived in modern time? The diorama captures everything a self-sufficient cabin in the woods would have (including a bit of the woods). The textures and little imperfections on the cabin capture the hand-crafted appearance very well, most notably the tiles on the roof pressed down only half way and the window with a half-plate offset in its top and bottom halves. The pine trees are done quite well, with leaf elements placed at convincing angles on the central axis. The use of the old tree stump piece adds a lot...