eti

I was going to say it's a great building but the sloped roof is too big - but never mind. It's all been said and done, it looks fantastic now. I like the combination of color and realism in your whole city , very well done.

I love it, very beautiful . Lot of clever tricks I don't really see how you did them... Great pond with bridge.

I wouldn't have guessed that this is an elf and not some other figure..? Is there some general definition for 'elf'? What I would call an 'elf' (tiny girl with wings) would be a 'fairy' in English, I believe....

It's a great train (though I have never heard of the 'famous blue train'....), I also like how you put it in a museum setting , fenced off with spectators.

The walrus needs look no further. His blue bucket is right here:

This is getting better and better. Love it. The last episode was the best by far.

I would like to come but it's a bit too early to be sure - by when do I have to decide? Probably not for the full four days either.

Here is a photographic account of my adventures at Legoworld: to enlarge pictures, click them and then hit 'large' This is Legomannetje's layout. Legomannetje specializes in 1970s Lego and old style 'stiff' minifigs. When I waited for a train, I was the only person with a face: The train took me to the underground station of an equally impressive, but very different city layout: Erik Guting's city. I sat on a wall and sucked in the views: Then I went further, looking for new adventures. I met Mahjqa, who let me take a ride in his fairground attraction: And he gave me a bottle of Red from his soft drink factory: And there was more excitement when I met Menno Gorter who took me for a ride on his mechanical crab. (His face looks familiar, bly the way...) And he even let me drive the thing: Enough excitement, it was time for a more relaxing environment. I walked to Aliencat's farm, but unfortunately a UFO had landed in a field, killing off the cattle. And the house of our Belgian friends Patje and steven turned out to be haunted and ghost-ridden. But that was no problem, really - I had dinner with them. So, I'm looking back at a good day. Let me conclude with a picture of me waiting for the train backe home. Aliencat gave me the cool hat I'm wearing - thanks, Aliencat!

The yellow car from 2008 also had a steering wheel on the picture. But not in reality...

Going further on the 'Roman' theme, I think an Asterix licensed theme would be great. So many things there that can be Legonized very well - Obelix's body could be on the same mold as Hagrid, etcetera... And who wouldn't like Lego boars and menhirs? The complete village (okay, four or five cabins) would be a top-end set, a Roman camp another one, the fish shop or blacksmith's shop or 'ambush in the woods' would be smaller sets, and the druid with the cauldron would make a nice impulse set. My own suggestion that could really work would be a swimming pool theme. With swimming pools that can be actually filled with water (so that would be big blue containers with studs on the rims, like an inverted 3D baseplate). A big one could have competion lanes and fans sitting on the stands. A medium sized one would have some recreational swimmers, a diving board and dressing rooms. And a small one would have a palm tree and reclining seats. Build the set, fill it with water and the play value is excellent (actually I am thinking about a MOC with water but I'm not sure what to use fof the pool since it doesn't exist - make it brickbuilt is not waterproof!). Only drawback could be parents who don't want water in the playroom...? I don't think this woud be a very big objection.

I'm really looking forward to Zwolle, this is so awesome. Very nice trees. And the house is just great. And that fence! If I'm not mistaken there have been some massive Bricklink orders here.... PS your english is understandable so don't worry about that.

You could also ask the neighbor kid to pick any four heads, headgears, torsos and legs from your kid's, whichever he likes best. That way the victim would end up with some minifigs he really likes, and it would only be right for your son... and it saves you a broken back!

That payment site suggested I could pay with creditcard also. But never mind...

Hey just in case you hadn't found it, there's a lot more views on MOCpages: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/65068 Not sure about the shutters, looks to me like a headlight brick in the bottom and then a 1x2 / 1x4 SNOT converter mounted in the middle, with 2 grill tiles mounted onto those?

Does this mean I have to sign up for Paypal first or will a normal credit card payment do? (I don't have paypal so I don't get the bit about 'sending a PM with a paypal email address)

I don't make armies, but aren't there bricklink stores that have the same (or more) for less?

Sounds great to me but Lego wouldn't be too interested in a show that's popular only a few countries (say, the UK and a few of its former colonies, like Australia). The only episode I've ever seen is the one I had to translate for work - and I liked it. It had aliens with jam jars with green slime in them for mouths. The low budgetness and silliness were rather cute. But well, they did Avatar. No idea if that show was big anywhere, I still have never heard of it outside of Lego. (Not that it was a particularly big Lego line either...) And doesn't Dr. Who change too much? They're on at least the 10th actor to play the Doctor, and his sidekicks as well as his enemies change all the time too, don't they? A good licenced line needs a bit more continuity, maybe.

sending stuff to the US _is_ expensive... but how it works exactly in France is unclear to me. Buying from Ebay in France is normally prohibitive, but on Bricklink there's 1001Bricks who advertizes 'We have the cheapest shipping in the world!' - Apparently he shops at all available shipping companies (not just regular French mail) and he finds much cheaper deals that way. (not to adevertize that shop - it's a good shop but quite expensive too apart from shipping - but just to say maybe it's so expensive because seller didn't browse for cheaper alternatives)

Great article, thanks! The main reason why it won't work for me is because I don't have much time since I work and I have a family... And I think it might help a bit that you're in the US, too. Let me share my experience in these 6 fields: 1. Do you have what it takes? As I said, no time except late at night... 2) Resale Shops I should go there more often. If I had time. But not the ones in the city, which have grown so expensive that they now charge the same prices as new items for their useless junks. There are some resale shops (you mean the big halls with piled up 70's furniture and dolls with one arm, etc, etc, right?) in small towns out of the city and that's where I should go. They tend to have opening hours such as 'tuesday through thursday 10.00 - 13.00 but not during school vacations...) 3) Garage Sales (Boot Sales, Yard Sales, Estate Sales, Junk Sales, Flea Markets In my country, flea markets (we don't really have garage sales) are notorious for not having Lego because EVERYBODY keeps it for the grandkids or sells it at a place where they think they can make more money (see point 6) 4 Trading Never thought of that. Don't know if I have anything worth trading, actually. 5) Cleaning that used LEGO.[/b] Of course I'll wash it if it's dirty, not a big deal. 6) Addendum: a Brief Mention of Craigslist and Ebay I think Craigslist = Marktplaats in my country: a place to post small ads for free. It has auctions so you can bid but often you can also directly mail or call the seller with an offer. A good place for good deals - recently I got 17 minifigs, some trees and a cypress for 12,50. Not bad, but not a flea market type of deal either. And when buying sets this way, more often than not they're incomplete. Ebay can be good for items nobody wants - like Star wars sets with no minifigs. The remaining bricks can be really cheap.

I find it amazing that S@H doesn't simply ship worldwide. As long as people pay with creditcards - and pay the doubtlessly higher shipping costs to remote countries - I don't see why they wouldn't ship to some countries. Warzones and such excluded, maybe.

As a kid I liked Fabuland even though I was an 11 year old boy... the figures just had more personality than the basic grin minifigs we had at the time. So I quickly proceeded to make all building Fabuland scale, making all my 5 high doors useless... I didn't actually play with it except with my little sister. The downside of course is the big <insert that tiresome argument> parts. those complete houses are really over the top - they should have stuck to 5 high walls. Rather than bringing Fabuland back alive, I would love to see a 'happy' line for small children (say age 5-8), both boys and girls, with nice and cute houses and cars and kitchens and ice cream bars and what not, pretty much the Fabuland look and feel but with actual bricks (no problem with five high etc. but no ready made houses) and using pink, orange, dark red, lime and other garish colors. And lots of utensils, of course. The figures could certainly be the Fabuland figures brought back alive, but even better could be to use regular minifigs with animal heads. (We had a bunch of non-Lego keyring animals when i was little and we put the heads on minifig torsos to act as the Fabuland figures' children!) Then it would be a line that made sense in the present day Lego world with the look and feel of Fabuland. And all AFOLs would run to the stores to get the sets for the parts...

Looks nice enough but I'm not familiar enough with the dr. Seuss books to see what book the picture is from - maybe you can post a picture of the corresponding book page? (if this corresponds to a specific page, that is)

Oh you'll immediately see it if you go to my MOCpage but anyway, here it is: http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/74552

I've been occasionally lurking for some time but never really posted anything on here. Well, this is me: I'm 38, I'm from Utrecht in the Netherlands, and I don't really keep pigs as pets. I'm daddy to two year old twins and recently picked up my dormant Lego hobby again, got a bunch of new sets and bricks and make whatever I feel like making. I couldn't tell what theme I like because I build up new sets only once to take them down again and make my own stuff which never fits any Lego theme at all as far as I can tell. Last summer I made Pippi Longstocking's house and garden en the harbor with her daddy's ship as an extensive MOC to bring to the Dutch Lowlug meeting. My most recent MOC is an absurd thing with two wizards who changed donkeys into pigs... I overall like to make things not too realistic but use some bright color accents and give things a funny twist (hopefully). Well, I'll go browse this forum a bit more... you can see most of my Lego creations on MOCpages here: http://www.mocpages.com/home.php/10833 And I'm also on Flickr, but most pictures there are of my family, with some Lego stuff mixed in for good measure - http://flickr.com/eti-eti erik