The 2015 Americana Display, Part 4 - The Lincoln Memorial

 

The 2015 Americana Display, Part 3 - Mount Rushmore Diorama

 This was a very delightful display - a recreation of Mount Rushmore with one interesting addition - the grim visage of President Business from The LEGO Movie.  There is a lot of minifig action in this one.

One note - all of the dioramas at the exhibit were enclosed in clear plexiglass cases.  Most of the photographs, unfortunately, include reflections of the mall surroundings on the clear surface.  I did my best to minimize the effect by trying different camera angles, but some reflections were inevitable.

Bet you didn't know there was so much happening on, around, and under Mt. Rushmore....

The 2015 Americana Display, Part 2 - Old North Church

The 2015 Americana Display, Part 1 - Jefferson Memorial

 As I promised in an earlier post, I would present photos I took in 2015 at the Park Meadows Mall in south Denver of the LEGO Americana Traveling Exhibit.  These creations were on display for a couple of weeks at the mall, so I took advantage of every opportunity to stop by and take pictures.

The exhibit consisted of large-sized renditions of the famous buildings in Washington D.C., other well-known historic landmarks, and a full-scale Liberty Bell.  Also in the exhibit were several Minifig-scale diorama scenes.

Even though it has been seven years since this tour, I still stand in awe of these LEGO renditions.

I took pains to snap a lot of close-up pictures of some of the finer details of the structures.

I will devote a separate blog post for each subject.

Without further ado (i.e. 'blabbing') here is the first set of pics.

Enjoy!

THE JEFFERSON MEMORIAL

 

A Most AWESOME LEGO SET !!

 We had some new neighbors move into the house across the street last Fall.

In getting to know them, I learned that the dad and his 17 year old son are both avid LEGO builders!

Excellent!  A couple of fellow LEGO geeks - right across the street!

More often than not, when we visit back and forth, the conversation subject invariably evolves into LEGO-speak.

So, a few nights ago, I heard a faint knock on the front door..  I opened it to find the teenage young man on the front porch holding a totally incredible LEGO build.

Yep, it was the Star Wars Millenium Falcon!  The really big Milleniun Falcon.

He had just finished building it and actually lugged that humongous, heavy, 7,500 piece monstrosity across the street to show it to me.

I quickly let him in and he carried it in and carefully set it down on my dining room table.

WOW, what a set!  The size and scope of the detailing on this model are truly amazing. 

And I got to see it up close and personal.

After spending some time examining the model in detail and exploring all the removable panels, I happened to mention how cool this would look all ablaze with LED lighting.

His own eyes lit up!

Perhaps this could become a future 'neighborhood' project, what with my expertise in all things electronic...

By the way, I did help him carry the model back across the street and get it safely placed on its display table.

The (Almost) New Double Decker Couch LEGO Storage System

 Over the past six or seven years since I made my debut as a LEGO Nerd, I have accumulated a lot of loose parts.  This has been accomplished through LEGO Store PAB Cup fill-ups, buying large Classic box sets, picking up parts and sets at garage sales, and parting out other various sets.

I don't have any parts count or inventory lists, but I'm estimating well over 50,000 pieces in the stash. That's a respectable amount of ABS!

Since much of my available LEGO building time is parsed out into small chunks, I need to work as efficiently as possible.

This means NOT spending time rummaging around for certain parts in certain colors. 

This is time that can be better spent engaging in actual 'brick-clicking'.

So, here is a brief synopsis of the organization and storage system I have designed to better fit my building locations and methods.

The bulk of my parts collection is housed in these small 4-1/2 x 8 lidded boxes. 

I acquired zillions of these from my last place of employment.  They were product packaging for some medical equipment components, and were rescued from being thrown in the dumpster.

Each box is graced with an Avery label that describes its contents, along with bearing a large color dot.

This example is the container for 2xN bricks.  When the box gets too full, I can break a specific part type out to place in its own new separate box. 

Some of the boxes are for storage of assorted mixed parts in a given color.  Some of these elements, especially smaller ones, are ensconced in their own separate small plastic bags.

For all of the commonly used smaller elements, I use these compartmented  plastic containers that can be found for 3 or 4 bucks at Wal-Mart.  Again, the containers are color-coded and labeled with what's inside.

Note the green dot label on top one of the boxes.  This marks a particular compartment as being full and indicates that I have more of these parts in a plastic bag residing in an 'overflow' bin.

For the really tiny parts, or for special elements that I have only 1 or 2, I use these smaller plastic containers, also sold at Wally World for a dollar each.

With this storage system at hand, I can easily collect the boxes and containers for each color to take to the work location, and have all the parts I need organized for working efficiently on all those MOCS.

I don't do any of my LEGO building at a dedicated workbench or table.  Most of the work is done on a portable lap-bench that I can take anywhere around the house.  Thus my parts system has to be highly compact and portable, as well.

Here is a picture of the general storage area for the system:

Right now, everything is stacked in half of a 2 x 4 foot closet. All the boxes and containers are easily accessible, but this arrangement definitely needs work.  

But that's a subject for another post.

Oops! Forgot This One...

I have one more small set in the collection that I built last Spring, that I completely forgot about.  

This is the Creator 3 in 1 Fire Dragon, set #31102.

The set, of course, allows two other models besides the feature 'creature'.

These are a sabre-tooth tiger:

And a scorpion:

With this addition, I now have a pair of pretty cool dragons in the display cabinet.

Cheers!

Whadya Do With A Pink Frog ???

 Let alone a hunnert of 'em!

When I cut open the bag of  unused 'cherry blossom' parts from the Bonsai Tree set, I was surprised to note that a number of the elements comprising the model's detail were in the form of  pink frogs!

What can I possibly do with all these critters?

The first order of business was to consult the Wonderful World Wide Web to see if there are any pink frogs to be found in nature.

Indeed there are!

A quick online search yielded a couple right off the bat:

First is the Pink Red-Eyed Tree Frog (Agalychnis callidrus) found in Central and South America.

A second is the pink variation of  the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog (Oophaga pumillo), also found in Central America.  These little buggers are characterized by spots on the back and highly toxic skin.  They only grow in size to an average of .75" long, not much bigger than the LEGO pink frogs!

I won't post any pictures here because of possible copyright concerns, but if you wish, you can Google Image them and see for yourself.

So, back to my 100 pink frogs.

I think I will make it a challenge to find creative ways to feature them in various vignettes, photo setups, and other MOC builds.  I might even make it a habit to place one on all of my upcoming set builds and MOCs - sort of a "Where's Waldo" scenario except that it's...well..."Where's the pink frog".

Stay tuned....

From "A Galaxy Far, Far Away" To A Small Bonsai Garden...

 I am finally caught up on posts detailing builds from last Spring, so today's offering is of a build from just last week - the LEGO Bonsai Tree, set #10281.

This is a delightful build that uses a a lot of clever techniques to render an organic subject out of LEGO bricks and elements - not an easy task for the designer.

This particular set includes the parts to allow the builder to construct the model in one of two different forms - a green pine version, or a pink 'cherry blossom' variation.

For this build, I chose the former.

To start off, the bonsai container is built. It is a very attractive rendition of a 'classic' Bonsai shallow tray, complete with 'stones' made from various colored 1x1 round tiles.

After that, the tree trunk is assembled.  This uses a number of curved elements, horns, and flexible cable to equip the tree with a gnarled, aged look, with just the right 'Bonsai' shape.  

To my delight, a small little outgrowth on the trunk was represented by a brown 'frog' figure! You have to look really closely to identify it as such.

Finally, the tree's leafy canopy sections are rendered with standard flora elements in light and dark green tones.

The final part of the build is the wooden platform on which to set the container and tree.  This also, is rendered in a very authentic style.  From a distance, it is very hard to tell that this Bonsai tree is made of LEGO - a hallmark of great design!

Finally, I still have this bag of leftover parts.  

These are the elements included in the set for building the pink cherry blossom version.  It is very likely that I will never do the conversion, so the contents of this bag will be parted out into the general stash for use in future MOCs.

Cheers!

A Return To Star Wars...

 Today's post is about another set I finished up in early Spring, but am just now getting around to putting up on the blog.

This is the Star Wars T.I.E. Fighter Pilot Helmet, set # 75274.

The set was fairly straight-forward with no real surprises.  Like other helmets in the series, this one also features a Technic / SNOT interior, with the details built up around it.

I especially like the way LEGO designers rendered the air tubes.  These are built up with 'radar dish' elements strung on a flexible cable.  Very ingenious!

A note for all of you SW fans:  Even though the TIE Pilots look very sinister in these helmets, they were just a bunch of regular guys that happened to work for the empire.  

At one point, even Han Solo was in the Imperial Academy training as a pilot.  His rescue of Chewbacca led to him being booted out of the Academy, and the rest is Star Wars history.

Here are some pics of the various stages of this fine build: