Lego Book: Building Animals

Over a year ago I discovered a book at my local library book sale called "Lego Modelers: Build Amazing Animals" published by DK in 1999. It looked like a great book but I had some difficulty trying to build the animals as we were missing some of the pieces that were needed. Our collection has grown since then with auction buys of 10 pound miscellaneous boxes.  I've recently taken to the tedious task of organizing our Lego collection and discovered that we now had some of those missing pieces.  The most interesting one I used was part #6216, "Yellow Brick, Modified 2 x 4 x 2 No Studs, Triple Curved Top." This brick was used to make the hump on the camel.  Now all the colors might not be exact, as is the case with the rabbit but it was fun switching the colors up.  With that I bring you the pics of our first three animals we built:




















I'm looking forward to making more of the animals featured in the book this coming week!

Lego News: Minifigure Online Game Trailer

Funcom, the makers of the upcoming online game "Lego: Minifigures Online Game" published a reveal trailer on YouTube on the 29th of August. The game looks fantastic! Looks like you'll be able to unlock all sorts of minifigures from Lego's Series line as well as others from the vast Lego history. You'll also be able to unlock brand new figures with codes that will come in the packages of upcoming Series Minifigures. The game will be free-to-play but I'm sure certain add-ons will cost. The game will be released during the second half of 2014.

Built From a Tutorial - Lego Gumball Machine

Here's a small build I made after seeing a video tutorial on Youtube from Lego4Chris. He did his tutorial after finding this design online.

This was a great little build to make. I knew I had at least one of the gray bricks with the "handle" on them and a few of the pedestal pieces so I really wanted to make this. I found sprinkles on clearance at Walmart that worked really well. They were Christmas sprinkles so I took a small butter knife and separated the green from the red as to not make the gumballs look too Christmas like. My sons "helped" and also enjoyed eating the sprinkles as I made this. Yummy and fun! With all the sorting I've done to our Lego collection lately I'll have to rebuild the second one of these with a proper handle piece.

My First MOC - Lego Friends Sewing Machine

Last week I decided to try my hand at making my very first MOC (My Own Creation.)  I've been looking at the Lego Friends sets from the first wave that had come out and was sad to see that I was missing set 3936 - Emma's Fashion Design Studio.  It looked like a great mini-set with fantastic pieces like the printed ruler, the printed easel piece and the 4 drawers.  It's a retired set and as I checked the online prices found that the cheapest I could find was $25 on Amazon.  I decided to check Bricklink and found a seller (The Block Shopp) who had it for $10 new in bags with instructions, just no box.  Perfect!  I recycle the boxes anyway.  The seller also had some pieces for Drew's Star Wars sets so it was a win-win.

Ok so on to my MOC - I loved the look of the Design Studio set, great colors, nice mini-builds but I felt like something was missing.  I'm not a big seamstress myself, only learning how to finally use a sewing machine last year, but I thought it would be a nice add-on if I made Emma her own sewing machine.  I pulled up a generic pic of a sewing machine as a reference point and gathered my pieces as I went.  I'm sure I could have found a more perfect needle piece like a screwdriver but at the time I thought a light-saber hilt worked well.  I may change it in the future but for now I was proud of coming up with the design on my own!

Lego Friends Auction Find

Lego Auction find:

Looking forward to getting my latest auction win in the mail this next week.

I discovered a great possible lot of Lego Friends bricks in a bag - a 7lb bag to be exact!!

I was able to zoom in on a few of the pictures and with the use of the website Brickset find out what sets these pieces come in.

This is the first picture I saw.   In this one I could see that this is definitely a bag full of mostly, if not ALL Lego Friends bricks and pieces.  I could see a pink 8x16 baseplate that is in 3 different Lego Friends sets. Lots of tan wall elements and some with attached blue wedge like pieces that come in the Heartlake Vet set.

In this next picture I saw one of the most promising pieces - a basketball net, which only comes in two Friends sets - the pool or the high school.  Since Heartlake High just came out I think it's safe to say this is from the Heartlake City Pool set.  I could also see an assembled swing which is only in one set - Olivia's House!  

In this picture I could see a Stephanie minifigure with a long sleeve blue-green shirt.  When I did some research I found that this figure came with the Stephanie's Pet Patrol set which is a little one that I do not have.  The next thing I see is a red bike which comes in a few sets but for Friends it comes in the Adventure Camper set.  I do have that one but an extra never hurt!  I also see what looks like the back of a mailbox - that red brick on top comes in Olivia's House - another promising sign!

In the last pic I'm able to make out a pink and red awning from the City Park Cafe set - a great set I never got for myself.  I can also see a window that has what looks like a butterfly sticker on it - that would be from the Butterfly Beauty Shop 

All in all I think this was a great auction buy.  Either I found a lot of great pieces and can build a pretty good MOC for my Friends sets with various elements of different sets OR I hit the jackpot and got a few very nice complete larger sets.  As it stand right now the largest Friends set I own is the Adventure Camper set which at most holds a few random minifigs and not much else.  I'll post an update when the box arrives and we'll see how complete some of these sets are!