Some of the official LEGO stores have a feature called the LEGO Mosaic Maker. It’s basically a photo booth where your picture gets turned into a LEGO mosaic. Once you get your picture taken, you get printed instructions for building your mosaic, as well as the #40179 LEGO Personalized Mosaic Portrait set, which includes 4,502 pieces (900 of each of black, dark-gray, light-gray, white, and yellow 1×1 plates, a 48×48 stud baseplate, and a brick-separator). The LEGO Mosaic Maker has been very popular with LEGO fans, especially families with children. It’s a fun and interactive experience to go through the booth and then finally being able to build your own customized mosaic. If you would like to check which LEGO stores have a LEGO Mosaic maker, you can find a full list at the LEGO Mosaic Maker page.
If you don’t have a LEGO store with a LEGO Mosaic Maker near you, or you don’t have a LEGO store near you at all, there is great news! LEGO recently created an online version of the experience that anyone can use. How this works is that you go to the LEGO Mosaic Maker page, agree to the terms and conditions, and upload your image.
The software will turn your image into a mosaic after just a few seconds. In fact, it will actually give you six different versions, so you can choose the one you like the best. You can even make further adjustments; how much the image is zoomed in, the position of the person(s) on the image, and the contrast. Once you’re happy with your mosaic, you will be prompted to save the image to your computer. This image is going to be your pattern to build your mosaic. You can either print it out, or if you have a large enough screen, you can follow along directly from your computer.
If you already have the #40179 LEGO Personalized Mosaic Portrait set, you can begin building right away. If you don’t have the set, but you do have a 48×48 stud baseplate and lots of 1×1 plates, you can still use LEGO Mosaic Makes to design your own mosaics. And if you would like to purchase the set, you can do so via the LEGO Mosaic Maker page of the Online LEGO Shop.
As mentioned above, the #40179 LEGO Personalized Mosaic Portrait set comes with 4,502 pieces. This includes 900 of each of black, dark-gray, light-gray, white, and yellow 1×1 plates, a 48×48 stud baseplate, and a brick-separator. This gives you enough options to build any mosaic generated by the LEGO Mosaic Maker. Whenever you want to rebuild your mosaic, just go back to the LEGO Mosaic Maker page, upload another image, make the desired adjustments, print out the instruction page, and begin building.
Another great benefit of the online version of the LEGO Mosaic Maker is that you can use any image you like, not just the one you take at the photo booth. So, if you want to make a mosaic of your pet, or a picture from your childhood, you can use those too. Keep in mind that according to the terms and conditions, no trademarks or copyrighted material may be used. Only images that you have the rights to use may be submitted.
The #40179 LEGO Personalized Mosaic Portrait costs $129.99. This is not a bad price for parts you get, but remember that you’re limited to a mostly grayscale mosaic. If you would like to make a more colorful mosaic, you might consider the LEGO Arts sets, which come with a large number of 1×1 round plates or 1×1 round tiles, and then use an app like LEGO Art Remix to pixelate the image and generate instructions. (We talked about LEGO Art Remix here: Building Custom LEGO Mosaics with LEGO Arts Sets). You can find all the currently available LEGO Art mosaics at the LEGO Art section of the Online LEGO Shop.
What do you think? Did you ever use LEGO Mosaic Maker at a LEGO store? How did you like the experience? And what do you think of the online version? Feel free to share your thoughts and discuss in the comment section below!
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Oh, I didn’t know about this. Thanks for posting.
Now I’m conflicted. If I want to build my own mosaic, is it better to get one of the art sets, or get the mosaic builder set?
I guess it could depend on the colors you’d like…
I like the color scheme of the mosaic maker set. It’s simple and modern. While playing with the app, I noticed that it’s best to have closeups. Otherwise, the mosaic gets too chaotic.
It’s a little expensive, but not too bad. And it looks cool. So the only instruction you get is the printed out sheet? What if you don’t have a good printer?
You can just look at your screen too. No need to print it out.
We got one at the Lego store and it’s great! The kids sometimes redo the mosaic. I just wish it wasn’t so expensive so we can get more. We don’t have any more of those large baseplates.
Gray 48×48 baseplates are being sold separately for $14.99 at Lego.com.
I guess you should also be able to find them cheaper second-hand.
I used a free program that was for doing beading. It was awesome because it didn’t add colors not in the image. The fact that Lego won’t let me use my logo that is owned by me and copyrighted by me is enough of a reason to completely bypass Lego and buy from Bricklink to create a symbol I want instead of something they deem appropriate. Lego is squashing our creativity. Some day Lego will be for everyone and not fascist in its rules. We also need Lego Adult to be released.. A part of the system that features adult situations such as BDSM and porn. Lego is failing the adult entertainment community. My dungeon could use scenes of Lego adult play time. Again I am serious about what I say. All the mamby pamby growed ups are ruining Lego by acting like children. Lego needs to grow some balls.
I’m going to approve this comment as I know you’re a regular here, but be prepared that you might get some heat…
My personal take on this is that not every company has to cater to everyone. LEGO is a wholesome, family-oriented company making toys that are considered safe and fun for all ages. This is a significant part of their brand image and unique selling proposition. There are plenty of other companies that explore themes and create products that are meant for adults. It wouldn’t be appropriate, or even legal, for a toy store to carry adult toys. And there are very valid and important reasons for this which are beyond the scope of a LEGO fan site.
In addition, as you mentioned, people can always go to the secondary marketplace and get whatever LEGO pieces they want and build whatever they want. There are in fact adult builders who explore adult subjects, but they are not demanding or expecting the company to actively support them. Whatever is in adult dungeons (as you said) aren’t even shared between adults without prior communication and mutual consent. Not all adults are into such stuff, and not being into them and instead (or in addition to) enjoying more innocent hobbies doesn’t make them less of an adult. But again, these discussions are beyond the scope of this blog.
I can’t believe someone whould say shit like this. Admin, are you sure this is not a troll?
Grim is a regular. He is just sometimes a little grim. 🙂
I believe Citizen Bricks used to sell custom BDSM minifigs, but it seems that as of now, they’re completely out of stock…
Although I’m pretty sure that if you’re creative, you could still produce a pretty credible dominatrix…
And if you combine a black policeman’s cap, a pirate henchman moustached head, Eyezor’s leather jacket torso (with optional black arms) and some regular black legs, you could do a pretty credible Touko Laaksonen motorcycle enthusiast…
Hello everyone. Try our Mosaic Maker – Brix2Pix
We have many more colors and sizes
Take a look at BrickPix:
Online at https://brickpix.app
You can also check out some sample projects create with BrickPix on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brickpixapp
Has anyone used the leftover pieces to create another mosaic on a smaller scale If so, how did you scale down from the big plate it comes with?
LEGO mosaics need to be fairly large for complex images like portraits because the pixels cannot be scaled down any further. However, it’s possible to create simple patterns from the leftover pieces.
I build my cat as a LEGO mosaic. It’s quite nice, if you wish more colors (and more realistic) I recommend https://www.brixio.de – for 49 euros I got one 48×48 mosaic of my pic in 21 colors!