Here are the plans for the Legs of the 10X Scale Minifig Sculptures.

Step-by-Step Building Instructions… READ FULL ARTICLE »

Today was the day of the Discovery Days Workshop at the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum. I had 10 kids and their parents join me today to build a LEGO Picture Frame. As promised, I took pictures of the event and several of the completed projects.

Here is a picture of the build in progress.

I decided to have everyone work on the floor instead of at tables, since I knew the bricks would fall all over the floor anyway. I airbrushed the faces on the picture above because I didn’t ask for permission to post pictures.

See below for more pictures! READ FULL ARTICLE »

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 »

You might be a LEGO fanatic if you build practical household items out of LEGO. Just in case I needed any more evidence as to the degree of my LEGO addiction, here are a couple of LEGO Pen and Pencil Holders I’ve built.

These are simple projects to do with kids, and for some reason remind me of the wood and metal shop projects I proudly brought home in junior high school. I think my parents still have the letter holder I made in wood shop when I was 15 years old in their kitchen.

The leftmost item above is a 1×1 LEGO 10x Brick, which is the same dimensions as other two items. See below for more pictures and details. 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 »

I’ve created another arcade game LEGO project, inspired by the early 80’s game Robotron. This time instead of another mosaic, I built small sprite sculptures. They are shown below positioned to simulate a 3-D screen shot.

Additional pictures follow, including a 2-D screen shot simulation… 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.

I’m happy to announce my online BrickLink LEGO Shop is open for business!

I have some LEGO bricks and other elements listed for sale and will be adding much more. If you’re not familiar with BrickLink, it is an online market place with hundreds of LEGO shops selling bricks, sets, and other LEGO related items like apparel and books.

BrickLink is my main source of bricks for the projects I build, and is the cheapest way to get specific parts, often available in massive quantities. Some sellers have millions of bricks in inventory.

As a seller, I will be using BrickLink to help fund my LEGO buying habbit by selling parts I don’t need. I will also use it to sell custom sets based on the projects featured here on BrickPlayer.com.

If there is something you’re looking for and you don’t see it in my store please email me. If I have what you’re looking for (either parts or custom LEGO sets) I will add it to my store and will let you know when it is available for purchase.