Chris McVeigh is well known in the LEGO fan community for his delightful LEGO models, excellent photography, and also for providing a fix for the #21303 LEGO Ideas WALL-E set’s originally faulty neck design. I normally mention Chris around Christmas, because he freely shares building-steps for his very sweet LEGO Christmas decorations. However there are many other LEGO models offered by Chris that you can download the instructions for and build yourself. 🙂
I particularly like Chris’ LEGO projects because – while they look very impressive with clever designs – they are not very large and don’t require a lot of parts, or unique elements. So most LEGO fans could easily build them from their own collection. Besides Christmas decorations, Chris tends to focus on items that look great on display and could also work as fun gift items. The selection of retro televisions, old computers, telephones, and arcade games are sure to satisfy geeky LEGO fan.
Other projects include birthday cakes and a sweet collection of LEGO bonsai. And under the vehicles section you can find a small train, various mini Star Wars vehicles, a Doctor Who police box, and my favorite is a miniaturized version of Benny’s Spaceship from The LEGO Movie.
You can find all of these models at ChrisMcVeigh.com under the Building Guides section. If you would like to build any of the projects, just click on its image on Chris’ website, and the parts-selection and step-by-step building-guide will open up for you. You can save this file to your computer, or just follow the building-steps in your browser.
If you don’t want to source the parts needed to build the models, you can also purchase full kits from Chris, with all the elements already included. These are available under the Buy Building Kits tab.
A couple of years ago Chris also started a series of LEGO portraits of pop-culture characters that he called Brick Sketches. These became very popular with LEGO fans and after over forty sketches the series is still going strong. They are basically slightly 3D mosaics on a 12×16 stud LEGO canvas, capturing each character with simple LEGO plates and other small elements. While there are no instructions for these, you can easily copy the ones you like just by looking at the pictures. You can find them under the Brick Sketches tab and at Chris’ flickr gallery.
LEGO fans often look for small projects to doodle with on a lazy afternoon. Chris’ models are perfect for this. You can build them following the instructions, or use them as springboards for your own models. They are easy enough for pretty much any age and skill level, look great on display, and can inspire you with further ideas.
So what do you think? Have you built any of Chris’ models yet? How do you like them? What other project would you like him to add to his current selection? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below! 😉
And you might also like to check out the following related posts:
- LEGO Brick Sketches by Chris McVeigh
- Make Your Own LEGO Christmas Decorations! by Chris McVeigh)
- LEGO Ideas WALL-E Available Now! (fix by Chris included)
- How to Build Christmas LEGO Ornaments (by Chris McVeigh)
- Build a Mini LEGO Benny’s Spaceship! (by Chris McVeigh)
Hey Admin,
Chris McVeigh’s website is awesome! I visit it often.
I’ve build several of the Christmas ornaments. The mini Diamond series are great! After buying several of the Mixel series, we have enough spare parts to build lots of these ornaments, and they are the perfect size for kids. We built about 15 of these last Christmas in a variety of colors, and they were perfect for hanging on the tree.
I also built some of the Barrel and Cooper series. These ornaments are bigger than you think. Maybe too big for an actual ornament, in my opinion. They are nice and very solid, but too heavy to put on a tree.
James, thanks for sharing that. Yes, Mixels is a great resource for the ornaments. Good point about the larger ornaments being a bit too heavy.
Really like these small models. Especially the arcades and computers. I have built a number of them already, but this article inspired me to check back and see what new things he got.
Yes, there is no need to build something super big to be awesome. And these models also go well as accessories inside larger creations.
I won!!! First and crowd favorite! Also a teenager asked me for my autograph and I was interviewed and was on tv! https://youtu.be/aiyRd7mXCZY BEST WEEKEND EVER! Oh, I also watched the LEGO Bricktumentary on Friday, it was very good even if you know a lot about LEGO (like me, I have done many essays on it) it was very good.
THAT’S AWESOME! CONGRATULATIONS! YOU TOTALLY DESERVED IT! 😀
So now you’re up for the transforming castle challenge! 😉
No because it is still not done in my mind….lol
So, you have to start with the transforming mind challenge… 😉
I haven’t been on this site in a while, I’m back. And cool article!
Nice to have you over, David. You are always welcome to hang around. 🙂
I made a bonzai tree when I saw this… really cool, had to use different pieces though cause I didn’t have some of the ones used. but it turned out really cute!
Nice! What happened to your awesome name? 🙄
I was on an iphone and didn’t feel like typing it all out 😛
Oh! I started to get worried. You have the bestest name ever. 🙄