The #21315 LEGO Ideas Pop-Up Book is proving to be very popular with LEGO fans. The nice design, lovely colors, clever mechanism, and classic fairy tale scenes also make this set a perfect Christmas gift. Another great allure of this set is that the story inserts can be swapped out with your own designs. This makes the set even more interesting and engaging. 🙂
Currently, there is a building contest on LEGO Ideas challenging LEGO fans to build alternate story inserts for the book. Even if you don’t plan to participate in the contest, but you would like to play around with alternate inserts for your own copy of the LEGO Ideas Pop-Up Book, I highly recommend checking out the entries. Last time I looked, there were already over a hundred entries, including some really nice designs. Some of them might catch your eye and give you inspiration for your own story inserts.
In addition, Jason Allemann, co-designer of the original LEGO Ideas Pop-Up Book submission, is planning to release other alternate ideas for story inserts. He recently posted his first alternate model with a LEGO nativity scene. You can watch the scene in action in the video below. If you turn on captions for the video (the little CC button on the bottom right corner of the player), you can also get some insights into the design process.
The base of the scene is built pretty much the same way as the standard LEGO Ideas Pop-Up Book inserts. Then, Jason experiments with several different versions of the frame of the stable, using different pieces and colors, until he settles for stone walls and a thatched roof. (You can see the variations in the first part of the video.) Next, Jason works on the minifigs, and the manger for little baby Jesus to lie in. Here, Jason also goes through several different designs until he settles for the one that works best. For the rising star of Bethlemen, Jason is using the same mechanism that raises the beanstalk in the official set. He made the support black, to represent the night sky, but in hindsight he feels that it might look better with a lighter color like gray or white. Finally, a collection of farm animals are added, along with the three wise men as micro figures (plus a micro camel!) in the foreground.
If you would like to build this scene for Christmas for your own LEGO Ideas Pop-Up Book, you can follow along with Jason in the video. It’s a simple built, so you shouldn’t have any trouble building your own. Remember that if you are missing some pieces or colors, you can always substitute with something similar. And, if you don’t have the #21315 LEGO Ideas Pop-Up Book yet, you can get your own copy at the LEGO Ideas section of the Online LEGO Shop.
What do you think? How do you like the LEGO Ideas Pop-Up Book? Do you have it already? And what do you think of the nativity scene alternate insert? Are you planning to build it? Or perhaps build some other Christmas scene? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below! 😉
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