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LEGO Exhibit at the Museum of Surrey

If you are anywhere Cloverdale, go check out the LEGO exhibit at the Museum of Surrey!
The Museum is currently home to a fantastic LEGO exhibit. About 35 members of the VLC.ca (adult club) contributed different aspects to bring it all together, with amazing curation and tech support from the Museum staff.
The exhibit is a brief history of LEGO and mainly a celebration of the classic era, 1978 to the mid 90s. In these years, LEGO introduced the “Minifigure” that we all know and love, and launched the first “themes”, such as Space and Castle.  The era sort of ended when LEGO hit financial troubles and really ended in 1999 when they bounced back from the edge of Bankruptcy with the new Star Wars theme (followed quickly by Harry Potter) and started gearing most of the sets toward licensed pop culture content.
My contributions were mostly in Castle theme, where I did a lot of landscaping, foliage and story telling with minifigures.
Visit the Museum’s site for more info an hours.
You have until March 31st to see it!
And if you can’t make it out, check out this virtual walk through.

Foam Arrow Games!

Take a break from your bricks and go play outside!

Kids in archery game

For a few years, there was a significant lack of indoor events and play, which might be a good thing. I filled the gap in my LEGO® life by getting back into Archery Games/Battles, and taking it up to the next level!

Until I decide to create a dedicated website about my archery games, I’ll keep putting all my activity here.
Sorry for the break in LEGO related content… 😉

Building Sustainability in Brick Town

I recently created this small LEGO display for the City of Vancouver, to showcase dozens of aspects of green and sustainable development that the city is pursuing. Some examples include permeable paving, bioswales, and rooftop solar.

I designed and built the display in about 80 hours, over a two-month period in the fall. Credit for building the ‘Repair Cafe’ goes to Andrew Delbaere. Also, many thanks to Amanda and team from the Sustainability Group at CoV for their work on the concept and research.

The display is made of approximately 12,500 pieces, 100 custom stickers, and 30 LEGO minifigures.

The display is travelling with the Sustainability Group. If you see them at an event, the LEGO might be there too.

Click for more photos.

Huge LEGO exhibit at the Museum of Surrey is open till Sep 13th

If you have any interest in seeing a lot of LEGO, mark your calendar and head out to the Museum of Surrey. The VLC (Adult LEGO club) has a great exhibit on until Sep 13th. It called Worlds of Wonder, and feature Wonderful things about our world in three categories; Technological Wonder, Natural Wonders and Historic Wonders.

Check out the Museum website for exhibit details.

Building for the Museum of Surrey

Many serious building at the VLC have been working hard to create a new exhibit for the Museum of Surrey. The exhibit open April 25th.

I am working on a number of different pieces for the exhibit, the largest of which (and the largest footprint of any build I have done) is a world map. It measures 16 feet across, at a scale of 55km/1-brick/stud.The map uses about 40,000 LEGO pieces and took most of my green plates. I was only able to set up a few continents at a time at home. Here are the Americas taking over my living room. Once finished, I boxed them up and continued on.

A few days ago, I finally got to lay the whole thing out at the Museum.

The Exhibit runs till Sep 13th.

Fluorescent Ceiling Lights using LED strips

I recently lit up a few buildings for an exhibit and I wanted to show how I did it. I'm not sure if I'm the first person to do this, but no one in my LUG had seen this done before.

Step 1. build a roof with a 1-brick cavity (or bigger) to fit your LED lighting product. In this build, I used a flexible single colour LED rope light.

Step 2. Close the roof all around it, covering the parts of the LED lighting that won't be exposed. Then add your 1x2x5 clear bricks.

Step 3. Pop the roof onto your building. (note that in this case, I did a 'green roof' and had to add a little more green to the seems to hide light-leakage.

And that's it. You have fluorescent lighting (there is no other light source in this photo).

Why Voting Sucks in Brickish Columbia

I brainstormed this idea with my friend Dayla Hart; and she took the lead as director while I pulled out bins of pieces and started building sets.  I’ll write up a little more on the creative process soon, but wanted to put this up now. With the Municipal Elections over, I hope that voters across the province will turn the attention to the extremely important issue of Electoral Reform.

Election BC has an excellent, in-depth and non-partisan explanation of both questions in this referendum and the potential new systems.
I also recommend Fair Vote Canada’s perspective, which is strongly in favour of Proportional Representation. Or my long rant in favour.
And last, if you have already heard on the radio that the skies will fall if we change our voting system, it’s worth having a look at this excellent Fact Check Site.

Dear (LEGO®) City Council

I had fun with the folks at Dear City Council this week. They asked for help creating LEGO versions of some some candidates. I supplied the pieces and a little expertise, and they had fun creating politicians.

 

The build got some media attention and hopefully inspired some new voters, both young and old.

Building the Exhibit at the New West Museum

The entire team at the VLC (Vancouver Adult LEGO® Club) has been working tirelessly to build a transportation exhibit for the Museum of New Westminster., called People Gotta Move.

Every giant LEGO display starts with a good foundation. Why cheat and use plywood you might ask? Well, in order to set up all the cars and mini figures, we had to be able to walk down the streets during set.

 

 

And here is the same wooden table with a few layers of LEGO added.

 

I totally recommend checking this exhibit out. The Museum is 2 walking minutes away from the New West Skytrain Station; and entry is by donation.

Ice Cream!

I was making some store fronts for a town display and figured I should make my favourite Ice Cream place, Umaluma!

It’s so hard to build LEGO when it’s sunny so I have been taking lots of breaks to bike to Umaluma.

Sorry the image is dark. This is inside a mall with really bad LED lighting. 🙂