Bill Ward's Brickpile

Sorry it’s taken me this long to put together the instructions to wrap up this series — using all the parts from all 24 days of the 2023 Friends and Marvel Advent calendars. I built an extra large Xmas tree using mostly parts from the two trees we got earlier in the month from those sets: Marvel day 24 and Friends day 12.
Continue reading “Advent 2023 Day 24 MOC Instructions”

This is the penultimate of my MOCs (my original creations) that I built in December, on Advent day 23 made from the first 23 days of the Friends and Marvel Advent calendars. This was largely inspired by the 3×3 red plates with a rounded corner which feature in the body and hat. But the main technique featured here is the mixing of odd- and even-width portions on this flat sculpture.
Continue reading “Advent 2023 Day 23 MOC Instructions”

Here’s the 22nd day MOC (my original creation) made from the first 22 days of the Friends and Marvel Advent calendars. The green plates from the earlier Xmas tree inspired me to build a green (John Deere style) tractor using the small red train wheels from Friends as the blades in a disc plow.
Continue reading “Advent 2023 Day 22 MOC Instructions”

Continuing with the instructions for the Advent models I built in December, here’s the 21st day MOC (my original creation). Again, I chafed under the range of color in the parts from the first 21 days of the Friends and Marvel Advent calendars that I’d gotten thus far, so I built a small model instead, a little airplane.
Continue reading “Advent 2023 Day 21 MOC Instructions”

For my 20th day MOC (my original creation) for last Advent I really wanted to get away from the wild colors of the previous two days, and I ended up deciding to use the white parts to make a little bunny out of the parts from the first 20 days of the Friends and Marvel Advent calendars. Of course that resulted in a much smaller model, as I didn’t have that many white parts to work with … but this is what I came up with.
Continue reading “Advent 2023 Day 20 MOC Instructions”

When I sat down to build the 19th day model I still faced the same issue with too many colors, and thought to myself, what else is that colorful? Then it came to me, a birbd*! I continued with my builds using the first 19 days of the Friends and Marvel Advent calendars. I have no idea what species this would be, but I think it has some strong birbd energy.
Continue reading “Advent 2023 Day 19 MOC Instructions”

For Advent 2023 Day 18 I couldn’t come up with anything that had a coherent color scheme using the parts I’d got from the first 18 days of the Friends and Marvel Advent calendars, so I built something that doesn’t have to, as the real thing is often brightly decorated in many colors, a tuk-tuk. These function like taxis in places like Thailand and India.
Continue reading “Advent 2023 Day 18 MOC Instructions”

Instructions are kind of moot for the Day 17 MOC (My Own Creation) from the 2023 Marvel & Friends Advent Calendars. I don’t have the cape (Cloak of Levitation) available in the program I use to generate instructions, but it’s simple enough I’m sure you could replicate it from the photo, should you feel any desire to build your own Super Sausage Dog Unicorn Guy…

This year I purchased and am building just two of the available five calendars LEGO has released: Friends and Marvel. If you want to build the others, here are some links to them on Amazon: City, Harry Potter, and Star Wars. (But please don’t support Harry Potter, due to the transphobic politics of J. K. Rowling.)

For Advent 2023 Day 16 I had the wacky idea to have Spider-Man be driving a sleigh, made using the parts I’d got thus far from the Friends and Marvel Advent calendars. Here are the instructions to build my MOC (My Own Creation) from this day, along with the parts list (4 pages total): Continue reading “Advent 2023 Day 16 MOC Instructions”