Yucca Patrol

I looked through your whole album! What a fun show! Two pictures of some really unusual flowers really sparked my imagination! They will definitely be useful for the greenhouse/garden shop I am planning for my first con.

I looked through your whole album! What a fun show! Two pictures of some really unusual flowers really sparked my imagination! They will definitely be useful for the greenhouse/garden shop I am planning for my first con.

Would any of you Brits who are disappointed in these be willing to send them across the pond to an American who might like them? I sure wish our newspapers did neat stuff like this here in the US!

Great idea! I can imagine a mix of tans, browns, greys, etc for cobblestone streets or irregular stony areas in a landscape. A rocky beach beneath a cliff might look fantastic done this way. And doing this with regular colored plates instead of transparent plates would probably be a lot easier since they are not as rigid and can flex a bit when being inserted between the studs. You might not even need the window tool with regular colored plates.

Although it is possible that someone else has come up with this technique in the past, I've looked at hundreds of landscapes and water scenes and have never seen it used before. So I thought I'd share it with the eurobricks community! I recently came up with this new technique for portraying water using 1x1 round plates that I call "Window Water" because of the tool I use to make it work. It produces a very pleasing rippled effect that is perfect for rivers and streams. As I have never seen this technique used in any other MOC, I believe that it may be a completely new technique, and so I am sharing it with the community here. Hopefully some of you will like it and try it on your own MOC's! First, lay down a layer of 1x1 round transparent blue plates. I've found that it looks nice if you use both dark and light colored pieces so that you can create the illusion that some areas of the water are deeper than others. It looks ok with just a single layer, but I don't like how the blue base plate is visible between the spaces of the 1x1 round plates. It's just not right. . . . But if you add a second layer of 1x1 round plates offset BETWEEN the stud of the first layer, you will be able to cover up the ugly holes that show the base plate underneath. Now you have a really nice textured rippled effect that shows the top of the lower layer's studs between the spaces of the new upper layer. Unfortunately, pressing these round plates between the studs of the first layer is next to impossible to do with just your fingers alone, because the round plates must be absolutely perfectly aligned or they will refuse to go into place. If you try it with your fingers alone, you will almost certainly start thinking bad thoughts and might even say some bad words! But don't despair, because somewhere in your vast collection of LEGO bricks, you have a special tool that will make this seemingly impossible task very easy! All you need to keep yourself sane while attempting this technique is an old style 1x2x2 window. This window is special because it loosely grips the round studs on only three sides unlike a standard brick that would grip tightly on all 4 sides. Simply insert one or two round plates into the window and use the window as a tool to press the round plates into place between the studs of the first layer. I've found that I can insert two round plates at a time, but some stress is introduced as the area of water grows, and it gets more difficult if you are covering a very large area. So you might find that it is easier to insert just one round plate at a time. Because this little window only grips on three sides, you can now slide the window away horizontally without risking pulling up the freshly inserted round plates! Here's a comparison between the look of a standard baseplate, a single layer of 1x1 round plates, and my newly invented "Window Water". I recently used this technique very successfully in my recent MOC, "Waterfall at the Botanical Garden" You can check out more photos of "Waterfall at the Botanical Garden" here! :)

Zoo would be incredible and I'd buy it at any price. Heck, I'd be happy if LEGO made a dog that wasn't a German Shepherd!

I updated the photos viewable at the link on the first post last night, so they should be there now. Maybe I just got lucky, but I worked on my wife slowly over time. Showing her my awesome car and plane MOC's didn't ever inspire her, but she is an avid gardener so I showed her lots of great landscape and garden MOC's. She also likes playing with minifigs so I let her buy as many girl minifigs as she wanted. Then she saw the Medieval Market Village and asked if I would help her build it if she got it to see if she liked it. Now she is going to be building the pet shop this coming weekend!

This is really fun! Great job and great to see someone not afraid to be who they are. There is room in LEGO-Land for EVERYONE! :)

This is no longer a valid link :( James Mathis Train Snot Tutorial click >here<

thanks lightningtiger! Yes, that lady is fishing illegally in the park, and those are prize winning koi too! Ha! My wife spent all morning today improving the plants/flowers/trees/etc and it looks a LOT better than it did last night.

I prefer to imagine a LEGO world that has no violence or crime, and therefore has no need for police. When we have kids, we will avoid buying the police sets for them. I'd rather them play with fire trucks instead. . . . But maybe some sort of alternate law enforcement officers such as park rangers or game wardens would be very interesting.

Hi everyone. Just thought I would share my first landscape MOC. It is a little scene set inside an imaginary botanical garden. It is still a little sparse on plants, but we've got a huge bricklink order coming to solve that problem. I did come up with what might be a unique method of making rippled water using 1x1 round plates that is described in the write-up. In short, there are several layers of 1x1 round plates, with each layer off-set by inserting the next layer into the spaces between the studs of the previous layer. It's very difficult to place the pieces, but I came up with a little tool that allows multiple 1x1's to be inset into the previous layer without any cursing at all! I'm not sure if my technique is actually new, but the "secret" tool I use to achieve this very difficult placement might be! Anyway, I hope some of you will check it out and give me some constructive criticism and feedback. Full write-up and photos of the entire scene here: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/289661

I just built my first landscape scene: a waterfall and bridge at a botanical garden. I built all of the "hard" structure and then gave it to my wife so that she could decorate it with plants and minifigs. She even found a way to vastly improve my stone bridge too. It is nice for us to have a hobby that we are both enjoying. . . You can see my garden scene here: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/289661 and here's a little thumbnail teaser. . . . :)

At some point, my time is worth something too, but I do enjoy the sport of packing a cup if I have time. My local store is very nice, and they will accept a cup even if the lid is lifted a bit since they tape them shut. I asked what their rules were and they said that as long as people were nice and not jerks about demanding that they allow an over-packed cup, they will overlook it if the lid does not close. I did spend about 30 minutes making a tower of 2x6 tan plates last week, but simply did not have the time or interest to stack any of the very tiny stuff.

Definitely more plant elements as well as food, drink, and basic tools/utensils. A couple more dogs would be nice as LEGO thinks that all dogs are police German Shepherds. But more than anything, I would want more plants: fern, variety of flowers/stems, logs, roots, etc.

I agree that lots of realistic weapons are very un-lego-ish too! But there must be lots of people that enjoy forcing their minifigs into realistic violent situations or else they would not exist. . . . I don't demand a LOT of very realistic plant parts, but another dozen options would be great. It is kind of funny that when you search on bricklink for plant parts, all of the ones ever made fit on a single page! If someone has the know-how, time, and $$$ to get started, I think it would make a great and probably successful small business.....

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! It's so nice to be among people who don't think I am nuts for playing with LEGO as an adult!

Those mushrooms are cute! Thanks for showing them to me. I guess I must be the only one who would like more options when it comes to plants for building realistic landscapes. . . .. otherwise maybe one of these aftermarket companies would make some of these sorts of things?

Not actually a weird place since I was in the LEGO store today giving the pick a brick wall a workout when I dropped a 1x1 round plate. I chased it as it rolled across the floor and to my surprise it stopped right next to a pair of binoculars that clearly were NOT part of the pick a brick wall. But those binoculars ended up in my cup!

Just as the topic title says . . . . LEGO has such a limited selection of plant and landscaping pieces that I was wondering if any custom part manufacturer has ever made plants the way that BrickArms makes guns that LEGO doesn't maek? I've searched around the internet but have come up empty. . . . .

Hello everyone. I'm from Birmingham, Alabama and just got back into LEGO after a 25 year dark age. Right now I am building alternates from Creator kits because I love anything and everything with wheels or wings, but my wife is now getting into it too and she is playing with minifigs, building houses, and working on learning how to make realistic landscaping as she enjoys gardening in real life. I estimate that I played with LEGO for at least 10,000 hours as a child, and it feels great to put bricks together again. One of my goals is to recreate Christmas 1979 when I received the 497 Galaxy Explorer Classic Space set. I recently bought a huge box of vintage LEGO and discovering pieces specific to that set and other Classic Space sets almost brought a tear to my eye. Of course, there are a lot of missing pieces, but over time I hope to gather them and get the Galaxy Explorer flying once again. I've set up a home page at MOCpages to show off some of my creations that you can see here Anyway, before I ramble on too much, I just want to say that I have really enjoyed reading the forums here and finding this great and supportive community of AFOL's.

It is just a tiny little watch battery. It should last for a few hours, but I can imagine you will have to change it out probably every day or two if you want to run it for a couple hours a night. If you do want to do this, I would suggest buying these batteries in bulk very cheaply at one of the Hong Kong gadget retailers that sell these batteries VERY cheaply. You can buy 100 of these batteries for $3.22 including shipping here: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/cell-batteries-lr41-ag3-100-pack-61 It would probably cost that much for one or two at a local retail store. If you have never bought from DX, do know that it will likely take a couple of weeks to receive your items from Hong Kong, but they are a very reputable company and I've placed dozens and dozens of orders with them over the years without a problem

Would love to see photos. Detailed descriptions in words just don't work for me. . . . .

Hi. I saw a couple photos yesterday and just had to try this. I bought the Creator 5864 Mini Helicopter but was disappointed to discover that one single larger pieces was not included in the bag. However, I was able to build the tug boat alternate model, so all was not lost. Does anybody know what currently available small sets can be bag built? I shook the plastic boxes of all the little Creator and Racer kits but they all seemed to have loose parts inside. I really loved the challenge of doing this last night and want to do more of this. Sorry, no photo at the moment.