Playing with SNOT

Continuing the exploration into interesting LEGO techniques, my son played around with SNOT. SNOT stands for Studs Not On Top – it is a way of building LEGO where the studs face in other directions, usually sideways.

One great example of this technique is the “SNOT ball” – this is a ball of LEGO where the studs face outward on all sides. It involves building 6 matching sides out of plates and then joining them together internally using various SNOT pieces. We followed an online guide for the first side, but my son picked it up really quickly and did the rest on his own:

To prove that is was indeed a ball, it had to be rolled (and captured in slow motion):

A pretty cool experiment that turned out to work really well! We need more SNOT pieces to build this kind of thing more frequently and on a larger scale (we didn’t actually have enough to maintain the structural integrity for long, and it fell apart on the next roll), so we’re definitely needing to expand our collection to include more versatile bricks.

Merry Christmas from Kids Bricks

In the spirit of the season, my kids worked on some fun Christmas builds to celebrate.

Enjoy!

An Elf on the Shelf alongside a snow globe

Wishing you and your families a merry Christmas and a happy New Year – may your 2023 be filled with creativity and fun.

A Sweet Pair of Sunnies

This is a smaller build that my son put together in about 10 minutes – just a quick idea that he executed superbly. The sunglasses were really stable and survived for a few weeks of being worn by various stuffed animals. It’s a small, but neat little build.

Sunglasses modelled by Hugs the Christmas Koala

Brick Bending

After watching a ton of LEGO Masters and being introduced to new ideas and ways of building LEGO, my kids were keen to try some new techniques. One thing we learnt about was brick bending – a way of layering bricks that allows them to create curved shapes by appearing to bend. You can see some incredible examples at brickbending.com.

My kids started with a basic example of the technique – using exclusively 2×1 bricks to create curved shapes. The size of the bricks allows them to pivot on the studs to give the illusion that they are actually bending out of shape. It’s honestly very cool, and they did this all on their own.

This wheel (which can roll and be comfortably squashed into an oval without breaking) uses 1,064 bricks in total:

This is just the start of these experiments and I hope to see more soon!

Unicorn Riders

My kids have been super busy with some impressive builds lately – I just haven’t had the time to photograph and upload them yet, so more will be coming soon!

In the meantime, here are some neat little unicorns they designed and built recently:

The next build is going to be much grander in scale…

An Evil Ninja’s Lair

We had some fun recently, with both kids picking a mini figure out of a hat and then building an appropriate home for it. Here is my son’s work after selecting this Ninjago figure:

My son decided this was an evil ninja (although I think Ninjago canon says this is actually a good guy named Cole) and that he needed a lair suitable for his needs. Here is an overall look at it before we dive into some of the neat features:

There’s a lot going on in this build, so here’s a breakdown:

An external look at the lair itself

A look inside

His ship parked and ready for action

The landing pad for his ship (“sh” is short for “ship”)

Working on his laptop – no doubt crafting more evil plans

Every evil villain needs a bookcase to study new villainy

And finally, the build has some moving parts, so here are a couple of GIFs illustrating how they work.

Firstly, the entrance booms:

And then the feature that all evil lairs need – a roof-mounted “mega weapon”:

This was a really fun build and using the mini figure pick as a way of generating a build idea was great. It was inspired by watching LEGO Masters, and I’m stoked with the creativity that it inspired. My daughter built something even bigger, which took her a long time to complete, so that’s coming soon!

A Little Bit of Nature

This was a team effort from both of my kids. The rainbow tree was a fun one they did together, and the hippo was designed while it was being built. I feel that’s important to point out here, to be honest – these builds are all made up as they go along and not based on a picture, instructions, or anything else. I know I’m biased, but I’m continually impressed with my kids…

An Underwater Scene

My son designed and built this underwater scene – complete with a diver, green coral, treasure chest, baby blue whale, and Nemo-esque fish. We strangely don’t have all that many minifigures, so it’s cool to see one of them being put to use.

As the close-up photos show, some of our LEGO pieces are really old! Most of this LEGO is from my own childhood, so it’s no surprise that there’s some dirt and cracks in them.

Our First Suggestion

Thanks to Christian H for sending in a suggestion for a build! Christian said:

A castle, a blue house, and a spaceship would be very cool to build.

My son did some micro-builds for the castle and the blue house but hasn’t worked on the spaceship just yet. These are really small, but I quite like how they turned out, especially the castle:

Also, this wasn’t a suggestion, but here’s a flower he designed and built recently:

Some More Micro Builds

Some more small builds once again inspired by suggestions from Brickit – some fun little ones that I think came together quite well.

A bat

Baby elephant spraying water

A simple couch

Duck on a couch

A character from Among Us

Robot

My daughter is currently hard at work on a pretty cool project of her own design, and we received our first build request – very exciting for the kids! Those will be published soon, but if you want to suggest some builds in the meantime, then please do so from this form.