I’ve built another video game mosaic, this time inspired by The Legend of Zelda from the original Nintendo. (See several other video game mosaics posted in mosaic category). Once again, I found a cross stitch plan to use as a guide, this time on .tastethehappy.

Like I did with the Pacman LEGO Mosaic, I’m showing a thumbnail-sized image here, because it simulates seeing the mosaic from a distance, which makes it look more realistic to the game. (The thumbnail links to the full-sized image.)

With only two days left until my Children’s Museum Workshop, I’ve decided to make a change to the project I will be doing with the kids. I was planning to do Small Square Mosaics, which I did previously with my son’s Cub Scout Den. However, after my post yesterday I thought it might be better to do a project both artistic and functional. So I decided to switch from a simple square mosaic to a picture frame mosaic.

Shown above is my sample, which I made by moving the bricks from my original square mosaic sample to this base plate.

See below for more pictures and information on how I made the bases for these picture frames. READ FULL ARTICLE »

Yesterday I wrote a post showing off my Robotron LEGO Sculptures. I was happy with how they turned out, but they are very fragile. So I decided to incorporate them into a mosaic by building a black background and embedding the sculptures one stud deep. The effect is a relief, studs-up mosaic, similar to the lettering on the BrickPlayer Logo Sculpture.

The image below better exposes the relief of this mosaic… READ FULL ARTICLE »

Here is the latest in my series of retro video game inspired LEGO mosaics. As with the Super Mario Mosaic, this was also built from plans I found on Sprite Stitch.  It was hard to pick which images from the plans to use, but building the mosaic was simple and took me less than an hour.

I decided this time to post a thumbnail-sized image which links to the full-sized image. I did this because I think seeing it about the size of actual game makes it look even more realistic.

Generally I’m a purist when it comes to my LEGO projects. Specifically, I don’t usually modify LEGO elements in any way, including bending, cutting, painting or otherwise destroying them. However, I have made one exception to this rule, which is that I sometimes cut LEGO base plates when I use them as mosaic backing.

Shown below is my Packer Logo Mosaic in both its original rectangular form, and newly modified form with cut base plate.

I very happy with the cut base plate result, and prefer it to the original design. This change also has an added bonus - it frees up the white border bricks for other projects.

Read on for more information on the techniques I use to cut base plates including additional pictures… READ FULL ARTICLE »

This is my third retro-video game LEGO mosaic, following the Dig Dug and Pengo mosaics. My previous posts featured coin-op games I played in the early 80s. Not long later, I got my first computer (a Commodore 64) and it wasn’t until a decade later that I got back to playing much besides C-64 games. (Eventually I will probably build something C-64 related because it was such a big part of my life for many years.)

Super Mario Bros 3 is the game that pulled me back into console gaming and I’ve played this game on and off ever since (now I play it with my kids on our Nintendo Wii). When I set out to find a good image to use as a guide, I found an excellent website Sprite Stitch, which has tons of retro-video game inspired artwork. I found exactly what I needed for this project along with many other plans and ideas for future projects.

I built Mario flying past one of those cute clouds with the eyes, which Sprite Stitch also had plans for. This is the same 32×32 baseplate as my other video-game inspired mosaics. After finding this website, you can count on seeing at least a couple more video game related mosaics from me.

After building the Dig Dug LEGO Mosaic a few days ago, I visited a couple retro-gaming websites and reminisced about the coin-op video games I played as a kid.  In doing so, I stumbled on another childhood favorite of mine, Pengo!  In general, this game was a less popular, but still one I loved.  I realized it would make a fun little mosaic, so I built one.

I’ll probably build a few more of these before I get bored with retro-game mosaics.  There are at least another 5 games from this early 80’s era that always seemed to get my quarters, and they all have the same blocky 8-bit graphics that are so easily adaptable to brick mosaic form.

I tend to alternate between streaks of building sculptures, then mosaics. After recently ordering a bunch of LEGO chess boards to use as mosaic backing, I may have just switched over to mosaics for a while.

I’ve seen a lot of Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, and Zelda mosaics. However, one of my favorite games in the early 80’s was Dig Dug, and I haven’t seen a LEGO mosaic of this theme yet. So, here’s my attempt at capturing several of the Dig Dug characters within 32×32 studs (pixels).

Tomorrow evening I will be leading my son’s Cub Scout den in a LEGO mosaic building activity.  This project will meet one of the requirements for the Artist merit badge - and it provides me an opportunity to try out what I’m planning for the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum workshop next month.  Here is a mosaic I made to use as a sample.

Each boy will be given a blank base plate 24 studs square (one quarter of an extra large base plate) to fill up with bricks.  The base plates cut easily with a good scissors.  I’m hoping this is a good size for 45-60 minutes of building time.

I will encourage them to create anything they want and offer some suggestions (e.g. collage, geometric or abstract designs, one large picture, letters, numbers, etc.)  I can’t wait to see what they create!

See below for details on the meaning of my collage mosaic and for pictures of the mosaics the kids made… READ FULL ARTICLE »

I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, only a few blocks from James Lofton’s house. (Anyone remember who he was?) For five years I lived in Arizona and when I told people I was from Wisconsin, on many occasions people replied - ‘So you must be a cheese head!’ Well, I have to admit I am guilty of that, and in my office hangs this Packer logo made from LEGO bricks as evidence.

Below are the building plans for this mosaic in case any other cheese heads out there want to build their own Packer logo. READ FULL ARTICLE »