Month: July 2016

Lego Vase Feature Image

Lego Rose & Thistle Vase Completion!

Lego Wedding

Now used to the Japanese working way of life of working late in the office every evening, I needed a way to unwind after a long day of work.  Why not replicate my perfected Lego Rose 68 times?! I got to the point where I could replicate the design within 5 minutes, and had a make shift assembly line setup on my apartments living room table.

Whilst I replicated the design, I went through various iterations of vase design.  I won’t bore you with each iteration, so feel free to jump to the completed vase design further down this post!  Key difficulty worth noting though was working out how to control the Lego Roses, without them continuously falling out (especially important when you have a room full of drunken guests!).  Using a netted inter-connecting Technic Plate design for strength, you can see the interior controlling mechanism below.

lots of bags of Lego for building a set of Lego roses
the inside structure of the Lego vase used to hold the roses
68 rose heads made of Lego on a table

Lego Rose & Thistle Vase Complete!

After many months of rose designs and vase iterations, the Lego Rose Vases were complete! I built four unique vases in total, each with their own distinctive design.  Originally I had settled on 12 roses per vase, but it lacked oomph!  Adding an extra 5 to make it 17 filled in the gaps nicely.

Knowing that I was to be married to a Scotish bride, I added a small finishing touch by incorporating 4 Scottish Thistles.  Using a few Lego trees from my childhood collection and inverting an underwater bush on top worked well.  It did mean I had to add my second non Lego component to the design though as each thistle head had to be spray painted purple to fit the part.  Simple yet effective, this pulled the design together.  Now it was complete!

A Lego vase with 17 roses and 4 thistles
A top view of a bunch of Lego roses
Zoom in view of a bunch of Lego roses and thistles
three Lego vases each containing 17 roses and 4 thistles each

*Bonus Test Vase*

Whilst testing the design in my apartment in Japan, I took a few Lego Roses and experimental flowers.  Enjoy my final bonus vase! (includes Lego bee!)

A Lego vase with multiple types of Lego flowers including a bumble bee

Mark

Lego Rose feature image

Perfecting the Lego Rose for the Wedding

Lego Wedding

An English Rose for a wedding between an English groom and a Scottish bride… this was always going to go down well with her side of the border!  Over a six month period on and off and whilst moving to Japan part way through, I built four different variations of my Lego Rose.  The end result was an elegant Lego rose which was also somewhat and “wedding guest proof”.

It all started with this simple design, using a similar approach to the Lego Tulip. A little too small for my table centerpiece though… let’s make it bigger! I simply built upon the initial version by adding extra petals to give a three layered petal design with an interior centre twist.  The second iterations increased size worked, but felt overly ‘blocky’ (yes I know I was building with Lego). The new stem looked great though.

A prototype of a rose made from Lego
A Side view of a rose made from Lego
The top view of a Lego rose
A rose made from Lego being held

Lego Rose v3

How to make Lego look less ‘blocky’? I think my third iteration answers this question, with a slimmed down version with rounded petals. I achieved this by layering up basic slate bricks and combing them with trapezium slate bricks to add extra curves. Adding some small sloped tile bricks increased the effect.  These four petal cores were attached to an improved central block with a twisting centre.  Using the small tiles in the centre, I also found these really elegant curved bricks which I overlapped to pull the design together.  This design was a significant improvement on its predecessor!

An improved version of a Lego rose

Final Lego Rose Design (v4)

Elegance is all well and good, yet when it can’t stand up by itself it is beyond useless for a wedding!  The final Lego Rose was a minor tweak on its predecessor, with the aim to add strength.

I found some old plastic tubes which I think were part of a Lego submarine I got in Torquay as a child and inserted one within the stem of the rose. This added the much needed rigidity to the stem. I managed to find a suitable set of similar plastic tubes from Joshin across the road from my apartment in Kobe, Japan.  To get the rose head to connect to the stem I had to tweak the inside of the rose base a little for the tube to sit inside.  A little elegance was lost in the base of the flower, but this was quickly resolved with a larger green cylinder.

Plastic model beams in packaging
A view inside the body of a Lego Rose

Other updates to the design included minor tweaks to the petals for simplicity and strength. There were a few drop tests involved and was surprisingly sturdy!

Happy with the design it was time to replicate and build 68 of my Lego Roses and design 4 vases!  You can read about this in my next blog post. Let me know your thoughts and comments on my final Lego Rose design.

A Lego rose held by a hand upright
Three Lego roses together
The top of three Lego roses

Mark

Lego flowers blog post

Experimental Lego Flower Design

Lego Wedding

After distracting my wife to be with a shiny engagement ring, it was time to order a ton of Lego and start the design phase of my year long Lego Wedding project!

Once I got over the new brick excitement, I knocked together a small simple Lego flower with 7 petals clipped onto a Lego technic steering wheel.  Simple yet dull.

I then got more creative and developed two new intricate and effective techniques. The yellow Tulip (open and closed versions) took 4 core petals which were attached to a central core with outward facing studs. I liked this lots. I then tried another technique by layering various slate bricks upon each other to build a larger red flower (not a clue if this resembles any real world flower). This technique allowed me to create petals of any shape. These quick mock ups would form the basis of the next two flowers I would design…

Small black flower made from Lego
Yellow tulip made from Lego
A collection of Lego flowers within a Lego vase

Lego Gerberas

Flicking through images of Gerberas flowers on Pintrest, I concluded it would be good candidate for my layered petal technique. My initial version used a two tiered petal design clipped onto a octagon shaped Lego brick. I then added another technic steering wheel to it’s centre to complete the flower (left pic). Whilst this worked well, it wasn’t round or full enough. I therefore tweaked the petal design and added extras to create the full Gerberas look (right pic). This design also leveraged a Lego pipe which was secured to a technique wheel and octagon. Only issue was it was a little heavy, yet still quite a realistic copy of a real life Gerberas.

A Gerberas flower made of Lego planted in garden
A Gerberas flower made of Lego being held

Lego Rose

Designing a Lego Rose was always going to be a flower I would want to attempt for the Lego Wedding!  My Lego Rose was built using the same technique as the Tulip, with a central core of outward facing studs attaching 4 core petals. The picture below is the second version of my Lego Rose. I take this design further in my next blog post focused on perfecting Lego Rose design…

A rose made from Lego being held
Lego Engagement Ring Box Open Close Up

Lego Engagement Ring Box

Lego Wedding

What better way to persuade my future wife to have a Lego themed wedding, than proposing to her with an engagement ring in a Lego box!

The ring box went through various iterations, utilising various red, black and white tiled bricks left over from my childhood Lego collection. The box sits at 6 x 6 studs wide and 3 bricks high to match the dimensions of a standard ring box.  The ring (not made of Lego!) sits on a mini raised plinth made from a 2 x 2 brick and a few 1 x 2 slates for a secure ish fit. Luckily her costume jewellery worked as a perfect substitute while designing this box whilst I spent a few weeks going in and out of shops looking for the perfect engagement ring.

The box and the ring was a success and she said “yes” when I proposed in Budapest on a four wheeled bicycle on November 2014. The Lego wedding theme snow balled from here…

Lego Engagement Ring Box Closed
Lego Engagement Ring Box Open
Lynn's Engagement Ring
Brick Twist Introduction Feature

Building a Lego Blog Brick by Brick

General

Welcome….

I am currently sat on a deck chair in Croatia celebrating my honeymoon after 18 months of planning my Lego themed wedding.  68 roses, 16 thistles, 4 vases, 13 large letters, 1 personalised table plan, invitations, 44 personalised mini figures and a customised ring box ALL made of Lego! Why? Lego has been my hobby and passion for the last 3 years, so what better way to make the most important day in your life unique and special!

Now that the big day has come and gone, what next? Well now that I plan to take a two to three month break from building Lego, I thought it was about time kick off a blog to document the Lego wedding build process. Once I recovered from Lego fatigue, will also start to add additional projects as they come.

Back to the wine, beer, cocktails and endless food for now.

Mark