2021 gave us some interesting "anniversary" sets, mostly minifigure based - but also other scales. We got the Harry Potter and Hermione Granger "maxifigures" and we got a Wizard Chess set, that could both be used as a regular chess set, or a minifigure-scaled scene from the movies. But how about combining the two...
Category: Modification
Ron saves the day: Upgraded horse for the Wizard Chess game
In my review of the Wizard Chess set posted last month, I mentioned that I wasn't too impressed by the horse pieces, which are in fact one of the most important pieces in the story. So I've set out to create an improved version. Here is what I did...
Harry Potter Advent Calendar 2021: Afterthoughts
I've slowing been eating my way through all the food that was prepared and bought up to Christmas, and now got some time for other activities, such as reflecting on this year's Advent Calendar and how it does stack up compared to the previous two calendars. I also have a few ideas for how it could have been better...
Display your Golden Anniversary LEGO Harry Potter minifigures
The 2021 LEGO Harry Potter sets have given us several collectable items, including a number of golden anniversary minifigures. I have been pondering how best to display those for a while, but with the announcement of the Hogwarts Icons Collectors' Edition set, the solution seems given. Read on to see the included stand as well as my alternative version of it...
Supersize me – Beauxbatons’ Carriage just got bigger…
A LEGO set is typically a trade-off between price and size. Creating an accurate model of Beauxbatons' carriage, with its huge size and a dozen winged horses pulling it, would have been an expensive set. Given the limited screen time it had in the movies, it is understandable that the 2019 Beauxbatons' carriage set was somewhat moderate in size (though still not at all cheap). For a while, I have worked on creating a bigger version and finally, it is ready to to be shown...
Hogwarts Express bookends
released to date. While it does look great, these bookends designed by Ryk Field gives you an alternative way of displaying the train to make it stand out even more. Interested? Luckily, Ryk has made the instructions available...
Hogwarts Crests – Rebuilds
At the beginning of 2021, LEGO released the Hogwarts Crests set in their wall arts series. It was well received and allowed buyers to build the crest of any of the four Hogwarts houses, or in case you had multiple sets, build an even larger crest for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry itself. These may all have been tried, but now, three additional builds have been made available...
Motorising the Hogwarts Express – Choo choo, and off we go…
The 2018 Hogwarts Express train (set 75955) was a step change up in quality over the previous iterations. And for those who collects sets to display static on shelves, it is pretty much perfect, but for those building larger displays, who want to have the train running around on a train track, you will need to source some train tracks and in particular, add a motor to the set. This post discusses how this can be done...
Book magic!
Books can be truly magical, transporting the reader in time and space to another world, another time - with the readers imagination filling in the blanks. To me, the Harry Potter books, definitely belongs in that category. It therefore felt like a good idea to turn the micro-scale builds from the 2020 advent calendar into a book scene. Here's what I did...
Finishing touches: Adding landscape to Hagrid’s Hut
Hagrid's Hut was one of my favourite 2019 LEGO Harry Potter sets. I recently added a removable back wall to the hut, allowing it to be displayed from all angles, both with and without back walls. Building a landscape to display it on seemed like an obvious next step, so here is what I did...