With 14 recoloured elements and parts ranging from butterflies to umbrellas, the latest LEGO® Botanicals set, 10345 Flower Arrangement makes for a pretty good parts pack. I recently reviewed set 10345, and now here are 2 of my own creations using parts from the set.
Today we are excited to publish a guest article from Arno Knobbe (@legoarno on Instagram), an Associate Professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands who attended our building workshop at Skærbæk Fan Weekend 2024. As a fan of both numbers and LEGO® bricks, he is perfectly qualified to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about building “off-grid” with LEGO parts, but were too afraid to ask because it would probably involve math... Fear not! With Arno’s beginners’ introduction to LEGO building at angles and diagonals, it's easy.
The gold rush resulted in a hoard; LEGO® Star Wars™ 75398 C-3PO is a rich seam of this precious "metal". Therefore, our Parts Fest featuring creations made using Threepio's elements is about opulence, glamour and gilt. What happens after the medium-sized golden men have been handed out?
In July, I reviewed LEGO® Botanicals sets 10368 Chrysanthemum & 10369 Plum Blossom. They were pronounced to be two of the Four Gentlemen: a set of traditional plants in East Asian culture. The remaining two are bamboo and orchid. Those flowers are less straightforward to make into LEGO sets: orchid because it already appeared in sets 10311 Orchid and 43237 Isabela's Flowerpot (review of 43237 by me, again), and bamboo because it's basically some sticks, and thus not interesting… or so we thought.
On 1 January 2025, sets 10343 Mini Orchid and 10344 Lucky Bamboo will be available, and today I am going to see if they are worthy successors to the first pair – both of which got good marks from me.
The last 2024 LEGO® DREAMZzz™ set we're reviewing is another great example of the quirky set design of this original theme: a witch's hut nested atop a gigantic raven. So far, I've been critical towards many sets of this wave due to unfocused and messy set design. I've associated this with the alternative builds. I like how these sets offer different designs using the same parts, emphasising the nature of this medium – but so far, it has deemed sacrifices on the design coherence.
With the new LEGO® Fortnite Odyssey social roleplay experience Brick Life launching today, 12 December 2024, now's the perfect moment to announce the winners of our Mind that Banana contest and find out which original creations won the prizes of LEGO Fortnite sets!
Occasionally, a new LEGO® part will present opportunities that I haven't encountered before. The family of rounded plates received two further wonderful new additions in 2023, and although they’re not quite so new anymore I felt that they were worthy of some exploration.
The end of the year is typically a time for reflection, and for us New Elementarians, that means looking back at some of the coolest new LEGO® elements that were released in 2024!
New Elementary ran a building workshop at Skærbæk Fan Weekend in September 2024. During the event, attendees were tasked with making something using 10 elements released in the last 12 months as seed parts; we will show you some of the results in due course, but first up, it's our turn! We rounded up some of the reclaimed seed parts from the workshop to run one of our "parts festivals", and dispatched them to a couple of our regular contributors: Kev Levell and Caz Mockett, and one of the workshop attendees, Nathan Don as a guest builder.
So, welcome to After-PartyFest! For our first instalment, Tom Loftus introduces all 10 elements and to take a closer look at those that have escaped New Elementary's analytical eye so far.
There are two moulds: a column of bubbles and a round-bottomed flask, each of which comes in two different colours.
LEGO® Speed Champions 76924 Mercedes-AMG G 63 & Mercedes-AMG SL 63 comes with several recolours, exclusive prints and two builds that couldn't be more different from each other – aside from the fact they're both cars, of course!
LEGO® Speed Champions has long been in pole position as a theme, bringing us great-looking cars put together with brilliant building techniques and useful new elements. It seems 76925 Aston Martin Vantage Safety Car & AMR23 is another winner...
Loftus? Lofty? There's a joke there somewhere. Anyway, today we take a look at LEGO® City 60409 Yellow Mobile Construction Crane. Confusingly, it's anything but LEGO yellow. Instead, it sports a bright light orange colour scheme and brings with it a host of recolours, new moulds and prints.
The LEGO® Technic Ultimate Car Concept Series, which traces its roots all the way back to 1977 with 853 Car Chassis and whose modern form was codified in 2016 with 42056 Porsche 911 GT3 RS, gets its latest iteration in 2024 courtesy of set 42172 McLaren P1.
LEGO® Icons set 10337 Lamborghini Countach 5000 Quattrovalvole is available for LEGO® Insiders from midnight tonight (i.e. Monday 1 July 2024).
The Botanical Collection is a subtheme of LEGO® Icons that features relatively affordable sets. In reality, similar life-size botanical subjects have found their way to other LEGO themes, too, including LEGO® Creator and, surprisingly, LEGO® Disney Princess sets. For me, these sets appeal as beautiful models. However, I'm foremost a MOC maker, and they are very good material for own creations – they include usually many of the same pieces, often in bright colours and sleek, organic shapes.
Grab your sleeping bag, citronella candle and first aid kit; we're going camping! The June 2024 LEGO® Friends wave includes 4 sets that are situated out in the wild: 42622 Adventure Camp Archery Range, 42624 Adventure Camp Cozy Cabins, 42626 Adventure Camp Water Sports, and 42631 Adventure Camp Tree House. Will these sets bring us some much needed relaxation, or will the bugs and bears keep us up at night?
