MOC

11503 Flower Wall: Provoking Creativity.[Review]

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Colourful LEGO flower arrangement with various flower designs, including pink, purple, and blue flowers, showcasing creativity and playfulness.

Having used up all of my available bench space last year to display my Botanical sets – gaining respite only by packing them up during the course of some renovations. I’m sure they will come back someday. that said, to take stress of the benches, the LEGO Engagement team kindly sent over a copy of their Flower Wall to check out. Now the idea of a lattice with a collection of flowers designed to be attached on the wall is appealing. And the system is designed to be expandable by attaching multiple lattices together – and don’t just decorate them with the included flowers, but also add in those from another set. To encourage this creativity, they actually sent me two copies of the set to play with. But more on that soon.

The set has 879 pieces and is priced at priced at AUD149.99 / 89.99 USD / 89.99 EUR / 79.99 GBP, the 11503 Flower wall is due for release on February 1 2026.

The set comes with 9 numbered bags, and an instruction book which gave a quick run over the flowers depicted in the set.

Lets take a closer look:

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Brickvention 2025 is on this weekend, and Tickets are still available.

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Do you love LEGO?

Are you in Melbourne?

Are you tired of working out what to do with the kids in Melbourne this weekend?

Brickvention 2025 is on at the Royal Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne on 18-19 January 2025. You can still get tickets for the public expo here. Some sessions have sold out, and others are filling rapidly.

I will be showing off my latest build, based on the Adventurers theme from 1998 (A sneak peek below), and I’ll have some Rambling Brick Tiles and a passport stamp.

Jay and I will also be recording some content for the Extra Pieces Podcast – so, keep an eye out. (While you are here, we have a new episode out, discussing some of our favorite sets of the new year!)

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A Brief History of Crossing the Themes Part 3: Time Cruisers

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We are celebrating the final half of season 2 of LEGO® DREAMZZz by looking at themes, books and more that made a point of inspiring kids to combine sets of multiple themes in creative play. We have already looked at the 6000 Ideas Book and explored the adventures of Max Timebuster throughout the 1994 catalogue. Today we move on to one of the themes regarded as a spiritual predecessor to DREAMZZz, the 1996-97 Time Cruisers.

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40647 Lotus Flower (Hands-On Review and Vase MOC)

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Another of the upcoming June Releases, 40647 Lotus Flowers looks like it offers a simple but effective floral arrangement in a relatively inexpensive package.

With 220 Pieces and is priced at $AUD19.99/USD12.99/€12.99/£10.99/CAD16.99. It belongs to the company’s ‘Iconic’ theme, and will be a LEGO-branded retail exclusive.

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AntMan Building Contest Winners Announced

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Recently, the Rambling Brick held a contest to win The Ant-Man and the Wasp set, Quantum Realm Explorers.

The Brief was to build a MOC that would exploit AntMan’s ability to shrink or grow –  so either build a microscale model, where a Minifigure could look like a giant, or one where the minifigure represented a shrunken AntMan.  There is a prize of 76109 Quantum Realm Explorers for the winners in each category. Entrants were required to use a minifigure, but it was not necessary to use an actual AntMan Minifigure in entries.

Entries were open for roughly six weeks, and were accepted from around the world. A panel of judges was assembled from my network – a mixture of builders and community supporters.  They were asked to nominate their three favourite MOCs in each category.  (Three points for 1st; One point for 3rd). The builders of the MOCs were not identified to the judges at the time of judging.

Without further ado – here are the entries. Continue reading →

Mystery Project X: Let’s Start with a Place for Space.

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I am working on a display for Brickvention, our local LEGO Fan Convention- It is now less 2 weeks away, and I feel as though I am more on track than I have been any time in the last 10 years. Admittedly, I have previously done a lot of landscaping with trees flowers and rivers. These last few months I have found myself drawn towards Classic Space. It seems odd to me that it has taken so long. Minifigures were first released in Town and Castle in 1978, and Space reached Australia in 1979- I was about nine or ten years old at the time. I remember the ’78 catalog showing some images of space (coming soon), but perhaps my childhood memory and facts are in slight disagreement. Star Wars (back in those days there was only one) was very much inspiring my imagination at this time

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Our family collection of space was limited to the Space Scooter 885, Space Buggy 886, Radar Truck 889 and the 1981 Moonbuggy 6801 – although I seem to remember that last one as all gray.

So, since picking up a used 918 Space Transporter from eBay, a few things have come together. I was given a bulk lot by a friend: A mixture of Classic Town and Space. I have identified parts for all of sets I once had in this collection.

I gave all the parts a wash in warm soapy water in the summer sun, and set about reconstructing what I found, knew and once had. Continue reading →

Light up your LEGO #1

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There is no doubt that adding lighting to a LEGO model will enhance it’s appearance – it adds a degree of life to it, enhancing lines, lightening shadows and highlighting features which may otherwise be a little obscure.  LEGO have offered lighting for at least 50 years, originally in the form of a light brick, with the options of a filter, and more recently with power functions, providing a pair of LED lights.  We now also see self-contained light bricks in recent sets.IMG_0691-2.jpg

While earlier  LEGO® sets used standard filament bulbs,  more recently builders have been able to look to Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) to provide versatile lighting solutions. Recently,  LEGO builders have been incorporating lighting into their builds more often than ever before.

The systems used vary from simple ‘bulb and battery’ solutions, through to custom solutions for individual LEGO Sets.  There are also sophisticated, microprocessor controlled solutions available, providing preprogrammed sequential lighting patterns.  Miniaturisation of  LEDs means that they are now able to be incorporated in LEGO builds, with minimal rebuilding required for wiring.

Today, I would like to present a couple of simple options for cheap and easy lighting solutions, that can enhance your models.  In the future, I will present some examples of other, more sophisticated lighting solutions. Continue reading →

Dragonshead revisited, revisited.

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Regular readers of this blog will be getting a little tired of its self referential nature.  Sorry about that. New readers may find this to be a useful place to start (or not…)

The Story so Far:

I Like the Elves Dragons set, especially the  Fire Dragon’s Lava Cave Set, but I am not a fan of the dedicated Dragon’s head mould, except for the obvious reason: great colors, printing, fits lot of detail into a small space. I looked at the Red Creatures Creator set, which was never really found in Australian Shops, as it gave me some ideas on how to approach a Dragon Head.  In order to get a good supply of FYOBLO curves, bows and small arches, I picked up a copy of the McClaren P1 Speed Champions set.  I found my self working through 5 drafts of dragons head, before being properly satisfied.  Except that left me with some Light Stone Grey on view in the dragon’s snout.  So I go a copy of Super Soarers (31042) because it had some FYOBLO brackets in it.

Now read on.

So I got myself some Flame Yellowish Orange/Bright Light Orange (FYO/BLO) brackets.  They are inverted compared to the ones that I got in the McLaren set. So I needed to rebuild the dragon’s snout a little in order to accommodate the changed directions of brackets: this moved the cheeks back, and revealed a coloured plate holding on the 2x2x2/3 bow that makes up the forehead: so I replaced it with some small plates.

I also substituted two 1×1 tiles on the cheeks with 2x1x2/3 baby bows, just in from of the eyes, enhancing the curved structure of the head.

Head clueHere is the main hidden structure of the snout of the dragon, just in case you feel possessed by a desire to try recreating the effect. Other color palettes may allow different solutions, and I think that would be fantastic. Please share them here or on the Rambling Brick Facebook page.

The Final Result:

I’ll let the images speak for themselves.

 

Play Well