Build & Fix contest: the winners

At last the time has come to reveal the most innovative uses of  'Ship Front 12X12X1 1/3' (Design ID 43979), as created by our readers. Our judges Sven Franic and Jonas Kramm had tough decisions to make, so without further ado let's see who their favourites were.

The five equal winners

In no particular order... the five builders each winning 70828 Pop-Up Party Bus and 70841 Benny's Space Squad are...

The Cheese Slicer, by Bas van Houwelingen

LEGO® Minecraft animals: Cat and Rabbit

Continuing his challenge to use the LEGO® Minecraft animal heads in original ways, Jonas Kramm takes a look at another two animals.

In today’s lesson about Minecraft animals we will take a closer look at the moulds of the cat and the rabbit. (If you missed my last class featuring the silverfish and chicken parts, you can catch up here.) We also have a guest builder, my friend Cole Blaq!

December roundup... and thanks for 2018

You'd be forgiven for missing some of our posts this month – we've been especially prolific! So as we depart 2018, we thought we'd round up December's posts for you.

The New Black: Venice 1486

Having already designed many small models that highlight new LEGO® parts for The New Black parts festival, Jonas Kramm returns today with a fully-fledged MOC, which he built with another Jonas!

The parts festivals here on New Elementary are all about sharing ideas with the community as top how new parts can be used, and it is always great to see builders with unique building styles and ideas use the given parts in different ways.

So I was glad when I got visited by the talented Jonas (Brick Vader) one weekend in August to talk about the LEGO hobby and to inspire each other. We started building a small scene from the game “Assassin's Creed 2” that takes place in Venice in 1486 and it turned out to fit perfectly some of the details I already built with the new moulds. In addition we added further details that also feature these new parts.

AFOL Designer Program: The LEGO® Story

It has been a couple of months since the 16 finalists in the AFOL Designer Program, hosted by BrickLink and supported by The LEGO Group, were revealed. We know two of the finalists well and asked them both to tell us a little about their winning designs. Last time Jonas Kramm described his Wild West Saloon, and today we have another Jonas K! – namely Jónás Kovács, a Hungarian university student living in Serbia, known online as BrickJonas.

Hopefully most of you have already seen The LEGO® Story, which is a limited edition set designed by me and packed and delivered by BrickLink. I sent this LEGO set idea to the AFOL Designer Program and was one of the 16 builders who entered the final, pre-order phase in the program. Today, I would like to talk a little bit about my submission, and show you some interesting details in it.

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Alien

Jonas Kramm has already created many models using new LEGO® elements for our parts festival, The New Black, and today I'm honoured to present yet another remarkable creation from him; a model of the Alien based on H. R. Giger's creepy design. The detail Jonas has achieved at this scale is incredible and the new elements he used are perfect for the model.

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Lamps

Today we have the first results from "The New Black", New Elementary's latest celebration of new LEGO® parts. Selections of pieces (see my previous post to read about them) were sent to various builders and first up we have one of several posts by Jonas Kramm featuring his interesting little builds and observations about the parts. Jonas is well-known as Legopard on Flickr and can now be found on Instagram as @jonaskramm. If you are not already familiar with his work, you must check it out! Recently Jonas has also become the ambassador for German LUG Imperium der Steine.

It felt like Christmas in July when a package from the Royal Mail arrived here in Germany. Luckily, I was picked to test some new LEGO pieces for New Elementary. The brief Tim had chosen was “The New Black” and was obviously affected by the majority colour of the elements. Exceptions were only the two colourless parts in trans-clear.

I was warned that the pieces would arrive unsorted, but that wasn't too bad. Because while sorting I got the first ideas what pieces I could use for what purpose. I was really flashed by the selection Tim has chosen, as it contained a lot of new moulds and recoloured elements that I had totally missed in the part update in June.

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Delicious Leftovers

He's been astonishingly prolific but today we have the final contribution from Jonas Kramm to The New Black, our celebration of new LEGO® parts. 

After talking about lamps, fences, furniture, Venice and the Alien, you get now the leftovers that did not fit into one of these categories but could be of interest nevertheless. My first is a small tree in autumnal colours that makes use of the bar holders with clip (Element ID 6015891 | Design ID 11090) and the new bar holder with handle (6143318 | 23443) for the trunk. These connect to each other via pneumatic T-pieces and, in addition, strings make the structure look more organic.

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Fences

Jonas Kramm returns today for another instalment of "The New Black", our celebration of a selection of new LEGO® parts. Builders have been challenged to come up with interesting uses for the (mostly) Black parts from 2016 (mostly) that I chose, and the ones Jonas used in this post can be seen to the right.

After my first idea, to create some lamps, the next theme that popped up in my mind was fences. This idea was heavily inspired by the wish to use the new skeleton leg (Element ID 6124849 | Design ID 23769) as it just screamed to be used as a fence. To do so I only had to add a 4L bar in Black, and furthermore I played a bit with the stone wall that frames the fence segments.

Jonas Kramm's alternate build of LEGO® Overwatch 75976 Wrecking Ball

Last time, LEGO® Overwatch 75976 Wrecking Ball was reviewed by both Jonas Kramm and Inthert but we had a further task for these two champion builders: create an alternate model using only the 227 pieces in the set! Here is Jonas' creation, and come back tomorrow for Inthert's. The set is priced £17.99 / US$19.99 / 19.99€ although perhaps you may now be seeing it on sale.

For my alternative creation with the pieces from the Wrecking Ball I started with the most prominent pieces: the dishes. I wanted to find a good and creative use for these. First thought was to build a motorcycle, but I couldn't find complimentary pieces to build the wheels. However the thought of building something to ride was still in my mind and so the idea of a hoverbike was born.

The New Black - Jonas Kramm: Indoor items

Jonas Kramm is back with his third instalment for "The New Black", our celebration of a selection of new and recoloured LEGO® parts here on New Elementary. The ones Jonas picked for this post can be seen to the right, and as you can see he branched out to include the two Transparent [TLG]/Trans-Clear [BL] elements that I sneakily added into the mix, just because they're so lovely.

After talking about building outdoor objects in my last two posts, it's time to go indoors.

Most of the new elements used here feature the 3.18 bar attachment, which allows for a lot of possible connections when combined with clips. Some of these possibilities were used in my first idea, a chair design that was based on using the recoloured handlebar (Element ID 6078610 | Design ID 98397) as legs. This part is the centrepiece of the chair as it holds not only the arm rests but also the seat, which are made of a square street sign (Design ID 30258).

2018 Skærbæk Workshop: the lantern and the puppy ear

Two or three times a year, New Elementary run building workshops at AFOL conventions. Attendees use new LEGO® parts with general brick stock to come up with quick, interesting ideas. At Skærbæk Fan Weekend in Denmark last year, 70 builders explored some elements released in summer 2018. Here are some of our favourite creations and interesting techniques they came up with.

Lamp, No. 1 (Element ID 6227901 | Design ID 37776)
Design Plate 1X1, No. 1 (6231382 | 35463) 

Another two seed parts for you today. Lamp, No. 1 first appeared in Harry Potter sets in 2018 in Titanium Metallic [TLG] / Pearl Dark Gray [BL], but the Black version comes in other themes like Disney and Elves as well as the LEGO Xtra polybag 40312 Streetlamps.

As for the other, it's called Tile, Modified 1 x 1 with Tooth / Ear Vertical, Triangular on BrickLink but here at New E we prefer the nickname 'floppy puppy ear'. It is still only found in one set, the dalmatian Prince Puppycorn blind bag from 41775 Unikitty! Collectibles Series 1. Each bag has only one black ear, as the other is white. We gave our builders hundreds to build with.

Bailey Fullerton “Lantern Speeder"

"Every part is a spaceship part", be it thrusters...

2018 workshops

This last week we've been showing you creations from the New Elementary workshop at Skærbæk Fan Weekend, and next we'll move on to the one we ran at Bricks in Florence Festival which used the same seed parts. We thought this would be an opportune moment to share some pictures of both the workshops.

Skærbæk Fan Weekend workshop

Inthert's alternate build of LEGO® Overwatch 75976 Wrecking Ball

Our little fiesta of LEGO® Overwatch 75976 Wrecking Ball finishes today with original alternate models designed by British builder Inhert, using only the pieces found in this set. The set is priced £17.99 / US$19.99 / 19.99€ although perhaps you may now be seeing it on sale. If you missed our Wrecking Ball review by Inthert and Jonas Kramm, check it out here.

Alternate builds are tricky enough with the majority of sets but with 75976 Overwatch Wreaking Ball containing only 227 parts, I was a little doubtful I could make anything half-decent without dipping into my existing collection. As a safeguard against that temptation, I decided to take this challenge on holiday! Four days in a log cabin with LEGO bricks seemed like the perfect setting, with plenty of time to come up with ideas - my thought being I could come up with one alternate build per day.

Day 1: Bipedal Mech

8-Year Old Elementary: Jonas Kramm's 8 LEGO® Pieces That Look Like An 8

It's our 8th anniversary of publishing LEGO® articles today! As part of our celebrations, here's a fun article from Jonas Kramm.

To celebrate eight years of part analysis and geeking out with New Elementary I searched my collection for exactly eight LEGO pieces that look like an eight!

Let’s take a closer look, starting with the smallest one and going bigger every time!

Flower Pot Pals: Jonas Kramm's Pick a Brick project

The LEGO® Pick a Brick team challenged New Elementary to transform an ordinary set into something new with the help of some extra pieces from Pick a Brick online. Jonas Kramm stepped up by reimagining iconic LEGO® Botanicals set 10329 Tiny Plants as a series of Flower Pot Pals! Here's what he came up with – and you can try one for yourself by studying his breakdown.

LEGO® Monkie Kid review: 80010 Demon Bull King

Our coverage of LEGO® Monkie Kid continues today with Inthert taking on 80010 Demon Bull King; examining its exclusive and rare parts as well as what interest lies in the build. The products in this article were provided for free by LEGO; the author's opinions are not biased by this.

The suitably terrifying Demon Bull King comes with 3 minifigures, 1051 parts and is priced at £74.99 / US$89.99 / 77.97€.

LEGO® Trolls World Tour: Jonas Kramm's Temple of the Blue Sea

Jonas Kramm returns today to reveal the alternate build he created using only sets from the controversial LEGO® Trolls World Tour theme!

My analysis of the new pieces in the LEGO® Trolls World Tour sets revealed many colourful elements so it’s no wonder that my alternative build turned out pretty flashy too. Let’s dive in and discover the Temple of the Blue Sea!

Minifig Posing Stand: Jonas Kramm's fantastic furniture

As soon as we saw the LEGO® DC Super Heroes Collectable Minifigure Series, we knew that we had to get our hands on the new little transparent angled bar included with the figures. We gave a handful of these new elements to three creative minds to see what they thought, and we will publish these over the coming weeks. First up is Jonas Kramm who analyses its geometry and possibilities.

Jumping, flying and fighting: these poses and many more can now be achieved easily by your LEGO minifigures. With the new element introduced in the DC Super Heroes Collectible Minifigure Series, called "Handle No.1" (6285587|65578) by The LEGO Group and "Minifigure, Utensil Posing Stand" by BrickLink, minifigures can strike a suitably super stance by connecting it to the bottom or the back of their legs. Regardless of which DC character you get, you get one posing stand and often even an extra one spare.

Lettering contest: The results

In four years we have only ever run two competitions on New Elementary, primarily because I hate saying one awesome thing is better than another awesome thing! For any of you following our LEGO® lettering contest, it is needless to say that we've had a really tough time judging this one. We know you guys are super-creative, but the quantity AND quality of entries nevertheless blew us away!

Didn't see them? Here are a few to give you a taste, but it's really worth seeing the lot!