As much as i love to take my work home with me, and who wouldn't want to take LEGO bricks home, i still have to occasionally put them aside. Last weekend, i was fortunate to travel to Boston to visit some family and i was even luckier to see the Red Sox destroy the Yankees at Fenway. At one point during the game i ran out to grab a hot dog, which aren't nearly as good as Wrigley's, and ran past a LEGO Red Sox mural. I couldn't believe all this way and the last thing on my mind was LEGo, then i run into this! 

I wasn't able to catch who build it or when, i was just surprised to see that LEGO follows me EVERYWHERE!

GO Red Sox!

I get a lot of questions about buying LEGO brick; where I get it, how to order, finding the right peices, etc. Well I'm going to let you in on a little sercret. Yes I do have a special ordering system that lets me order hundreds of thousands of LEGO bricks from LEGO headquarters in Denmark, but often times, that takes up to several weeks to get to Chicago. So when I'm in a pinch and need some LEGO bricks in a hurry, I use a website called www.bricklink.com.

 Bricklink is like a Craig's List type of site but strictly for LEGO. Here you can buy and sell anything LEGO from individual parts, to minifigures to rare LEGO sets; it's definately somewhere you can spend of lot of time surfing!  Most times, when I need LEGO fast, I'll simply browse the "parts" section ofteh website and place an order through a private LEGO dealer, and within a week ( rather than 6-8), I'll have all the peices I need.

There's also no limit to how little you can order, if you only need one littel peice, your'e free to order just that. It's also a great place to find rare and intersting minifigures. So if you're looking for just that right piece for your next model or perhaps a few hundred  peices for your model of the Empire State Building, definately try to check out  Brick Link, I promise you won't be dissapointed.

Cheers!

Dan

I'm always looking for fans and visitors to show me their LEGO creations so I can then display them on our website. Well let me say, they for the first fan model we're posting, I am truly amazed! Two young men visited LEGOLAND Discovery Center over the last two days and each created a couple of very impressive models, even by LEGO professional standards. So I would like to thank Ethan and Matt for their hard work, ingenuity, creativity and most of all, letting take  pictures of their models. 

Here's is Ethan's black ship, complete with real working hatch.......

And here's a picture of Matt's Mech......

And here's one more picture the two together.......

Both Matt and Ethan's model are currently on display on our Model Builder Workshop for all our guests to see. So if you have a model you would like to see immortalized on our website or at the LEGOLAND Discovery Center, don't hesitate to email it to me!

A lot of people ask me how I keep my LEGO models from falling apart and whether or not I glue them. Well, yes I glue them, but it's not the same type of glue you can simply buy at your local hobby store. The stuff I use is not only expensive and somewhat dangerous, but also hard to find. In actuality, it's not really a glue, but rather a chemical used for cleaning and decreasing metal that just happens to melt LEGO brick. Unfortunately, not everyone can buy this at their neighborhood Home Depot, I had to purchase my supply from Poland and it cost about $100 for a 1 qt bottle. The glue is also dangerous if not handled properly. I use specialized bottles to apply it to the LEGO, but it if ever gets on my fingers, I have to be very careful what i touch. On a few occasions, I've left fingerprints on my keyboard and cell phone because the glue melted the plastic in the shape of my fingerprint. Here's a picture of the bottles I use, they have medical grade needles on the top, the same ones used for IV's!

Here's a picture of what happens when you put too much glue on a LEGO brick. The brick is not completely ruined and will not fit together with other bricks. The glue even melted a tiny hole in the top!

But if you want to glue your LEGO models together at home, any super glue or model glue will work just fine!

Cheers!

Howdy!

As I'm sure you folks have already glanced at my profile page, you will have read how my favorite model was a bust of Harry Caray. And because it was my favorite build, I thought you might want to see a few pictures of it. If you're not familiar with who Harry Caray is, he was a famous announcer for the Chicago Cubs and a legend in Chicago sports media. I've included a few pictures of the model and Harry himself to show you a little comparison. 

Harry Caray passed away several years ago but his spirit, and now his LEGO bust lives on. The model can be seen at the Harry Caray Restaurant in Chicago on Kinzie. 

We've started rumors on building a few other baseball players, but so far those are still rumors, but check back in to my blog to stay posted. Enjoy the pictures!

here's the real Harry:

....and here's the LEGO model

The LEGO model took me about 60 hours to complete, using over 4,000 LEGO bricks; most of which were 1x2 plates w/ 1 stud, or what we call in the biz, "jumpers". The Harry model is also to scale, so if you stood next to it, it would be very close to the actual size of a human head!

Around the same time i finished the model, was the anniversary of Harry Caray's passing and his restaurant always throws a big celebration in memory of the famed announcer. So to help make the even even bigger that year, I donated the LEGO model to be displayed in their restaurant, so if you visit the Harry Caray restaurant in Chicago, you'll be able to see my LEGO model on display along with load of other Chicago Cubs memorabilia. How cool is that?

That's it for today LEGO fans, but stop by next week, I'll be sure to have some exciting news for you!

Hello LEGO® fans!

My name is Dan Morey and I’m the Master Model Builder here at the LEGOLAND® Discovery Center Chicago. I would like to thank you for visiting my blog page and hope that you’ll keep checking in regularly. With the advent of this new blog, I’ll be posting pictures of new models, answering your questions and telling stories of what happens behind the scenes here at LEGOLAND. So get ready for a weekly tale in the life of a LEGO model builder.

Thanks friends, I’ll be speaking to you soon.

Dan.