...And We're Back!

Hey everyone! Sorry for going dormant on you for the past month... Life's been a little wonky lately. We've gotten ourselves more or less settled in to our new place for now, but another move is coming soon. Yay.

I don't have my fancy spare-room workshop set up in the new place. This severely limits what I can accomplish. Not that having a work space would have made much difference to my productivity over the last month- We've been busy and I've been blue.

I haven't been completely void of creative output, however! K and I are both very keen on the idea of building a whole downtown out of Lego. Our first attempts at some downtown buildings can be seen in an earlier post. Here's our latest. They aren't 100% done just yet but are close enough to show off.

First, we re-imagined the pizzeria we had previously built:

 Here's the front, with pizza chef and

delivery boy. (we haven't built the interior yet)

 Here's the back. Upstairs is a vacant

apartment, probably to become an artist's

studio at some point

 I've designed the buildings to open on a hinge like

dollhouses do

In addition, I came up with a hardware store with upstairs apartment. We call it "Hank's Tools"

 Exterior front

 Inside we see Hank's wares

Here's a front 3/4 view to show the stairs and

door to the upstairs

So there you go. Sure, it ain't wood working or prop building, but it's creative and challenging and fun.

Other quick updates:

I've ordered more plastic for my 3D printer, so expect some posts about my designing and printing objects.

I'm working a lot of overtime these next two weeks, so hopefully I'll have some spare money to buck up for materials for a bigger project I have in mind.

I'm thinking about writing a post about why I like the movies that I like and my attempts to decipher my seemingly contradictory film tastes. Is that something anyone would be interested in reading about? Let me know in a comment or something.

That's it for me for now.

-J 

Breaking down Lego

Hello again

I've not done too much this week (see my last post about that) but in preparing to move, I have had to break down some of my Lego creations.

Yeah, that's right. I said "Lego." Kat and I promised each other we'd never actually grow up and playing with Lego together is an important part of that promise. We've made some sweet stuff together. I always hate taking Lego creations apart but it's better to do it myself than let the act of moving destroy them for me. At least this way I can keep parts sorted.

So first I had a bunch of Minifigures (Lego people) to disassemble and sort.

These unfortunate souls are about

to be split into parts and placed...

...Here. Kinda reminds me of some sort of sci-fi movie.

A big bin of spare people parts.

I've spent a great amount of effort and time to get the Lego organized. This is something I've always fantasized about since I was a kid and over the years I've made several attempts, all of which failed. This time I'm serious. I've got these awesome containers that hold smaller containers that can be arranged in a nearly infinite number of ways. Each of the yellow rectangles can come out of the case and sit on the workbench. This is awesome because I can grab just the bins I need at the moment and have them handy. Here's some shots of what I have done so far:

 All the specialized tiny bits that are always

impossible to find

 The flat tile parts from 1x2 up to 2x10

Bricks, bricks, bricks!

So yeah, I'm pretty proud of that. I have so much more sorting to do- I'll probably end up with more than 12 of these containers.

Now on to some stuff Kat and I made!

We had the idea to make a town. We started at the most logical point, the very heart and soul of a town- a pizza place. We wanted a "downtown" vibe to our building so it's a pizza place and a post office with apartments on the second floor.

Pizza and Post office- what else does a town need?

On the ground floor you have the pizza

oven and serving counter. On the second,

a man getting home from work.

We also decided we needed a high rise apartment building downtown. Something that looked kinda old fashioned, like it had been built decades ago. Something big that could house a lot of Lego people. We got a little ambitious and actually ran out of grey bricks. We need to buy more (which we can do via Bricklink.com or Lego's official online "Pick a Brick" store) but here's what we have done so far:

 What better way to convey "Old building" than to

design it with a Gothic theme and ivy on the walls?

Kat did all the interior stuff, from beds and tables

to a terrarium with a frog in it. She's awesome.

So yeah. You don't need fancy power tools and special skills to make fun, creative things. It can be done with plastic bricks and patience.

I love building and goofing with my wife.

-J