Sometimes we're approached with a request that isn't so much about the build - it's more about the photography of the final result. When we were asked to create a magazine cover we knew it would be the case this time!

Here we all are in October wondering how we’re nearly at Halloween, we don't know about you but this year is whizzing by! Before we knew it we found ourselves taking out all of our summer tours, it's been a busy time, so much great feedback from all our venues. Autumn season is in full swing and the studio timetable is full with commission work too!

No, I’m not talking about building a LEGO model in green bricks - but reducing our carbon footprint and helping to do our bit to save the planet!

As with all businesses in Scotland, we are required to take some basic measures - such as separating our waste and recycling - but we’ve always been aware that there was much more we could do.

The summer has finally arrived with summer holidays, staycations and the kids breaking up for school we are delighted to have all our tours now open! Staying busy we have delivered our tours into great locations in both Norwich and Ipswich and clocked up the miles to make sure we got everything delivered, built and ready to go. All now open, with restrictions changing across the country just this week, we hope visitors can enjoy a summer of fun, safely.

I love working on projects that are a bit out of the ordinary, and this one definitely hit that mark. A friend asked if we could make a special present for his wife’s birthday. She loves Sugar Skulls and he was arranging various parts of her birthday celebrations around that theme.

I thought this was a really interesting idea, using a fun and colourful medium to represent the essence of sugar skulls as a joyful celebration of life and love.

Allison Sparks of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Museum had seen the bespoke figures we had created for the Bannockburn, Alloa Tower and Culross House visitor sites, and she was interested in seeing if we could work together on some figs. The Museum was undergoing a major overhaul and planned on re-opening in Summer 2020. As with everything that was delayed by the pandemic, but they have just re-opened to the public (with some COVID restrictions still in place) and we’ve been delighted to be part of their story.

It has been another busy month! A secret Press shoot, lots of shopping for a new set we are building but the most exciting thing has been preparing to get all of our tours out! Over the next few weeks our tours will be spread across the country and we couldn't be happier! After months of planning and preparing with the venues, following guidance on re-opening, we can finally get our tours back out! We have a busy few weeks ahead getting the tours into the venues and built but so excited to be doing what we love once more.

Sometimes a building’s designs lend themselves really well to being replicated in LEGO bricks. The cladding on the new Moxy Hotel in Slough is just such as building. I say ‘new’ and I really mean it. It was so new it was being built at the same time as we were building our replica of it! We were asked by the construction company - Morgan Sindall - to create a LEGO version of the hotel as their gift to the hotel management.

When there's something strange.... in your neighbour-Hub office... OK, I'll stop the ghostbusters puns now - but what if you do have something a bit unusual that you need help with? Especially if it's made of LEGO!

Around a month or so ago we got an unusual request from a usual customer. LEGO (UK) had a phone box in their central London office - but it needed to be on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Having been installed when the office opened, no-one knew who had built it, or how, or how on earth it could be removed. All they knew was that there was ‘some steel’ inside a ‘mainly unglued’ model. Well, we like a challenge!

We have had our first tour open this month at the National Museum of Flight. Amazing to be back out building our tour in a venue! Full credit to the venue too, the COVID safe measures they have in place themselves and for visitors are so good and during build up certainly for us things were a little different. Building Concorde in situ was brilliant and in this months newsletter we are delighted to share the time lapse video. The tour has been a huge hit for the museum already and will be open until June 27th. It was also a great opportunity to use some of our new kit to support social distancing, more on that later too!

It all begins with a brick... Join Warren live from his workshop on Thursday June 3rd June at 7pm where we'll be speaking about his LEGO journey and his role as an author and artist in LEGO. Warren is donating his time and his help to raise funds to renovate a Scout Hall in Edinburgh, which also needs some new bricks (unfortunately real ones rather than LEGO Bricks....!)

We have 4 tickets to give away!

In times where social distancing is the new normal, it is important for us to support our customers with a solution. We are delighted to announce the arrival of our new walling system, this will help venues create one way systems and facilitate social distancing for visitors to our exhibitions. Light-weight and easy to put up, it is a great addition. Whatever the venue size or shape we can adapt the panels to help. Panels have a mixture of information, LEGO facts and images which add to the tour. As we all continue to adapt to the new normal we are making sure we enhance the tours and support our customers.

Venues often commission us to build a model of local or topical importance to accompany their run of one of our touring exhibitions. The National Museum of Flight has an amazing collection of aircraft on display and they asked us if we could do a version of Concorde for them. Not one to shy away from a challenge we jumped at the chance to recreate the beautiful shape and lines!

To celebrate the museum’s reopening we have teamed up to offer 4 x tickets to Brick Wonders at the National Museum of Flight, East Fortune. The winner will need to be able to make their own way to the museum while the exhibition is on.

To be in with a chance to win:

- Like our facebook post

- Share the post

- Tag in a family member or friend you would like to bring along!

We will be drawing our winner on Friday 30th April 2021 at 5pm, so you have a week to enter! GOOD LUCK!!

April already! This year, as weird as it has been, does seem to be moving quickly. Easter was a blur for us with so much work to get Brick City safely on its way to the US. We really enjoyed the final refresh to the tour, more on that later. We are so excited and feel this week has bought a new sense of freedom with more restrictions being lifted, we already have more tour plans as venues begin to better understand their own roadmap through 2021; don't forget to get in touch for more info on tours we have left to book.

As part of the model refresh for our Brick City tour, we wanted to include a celebration piece where we could really go all-out with minifigs having fun. And what better chance for that than a Mardi Gras Parade, where we not only get to enjoy floats, costumes and paradees, but we could also showcase some of the beautiful architecture and ornate balconies of the French Quarter of New Orleans?

It has been a busy month here at Warren Elsmore Ltd. As we see the lockdown lifting we are busy planning for the year and this month bring you news on what we have been up to.

SketchUp is important to our design process as it enables us to turn our ideas into something we can show to a customer and they can understand. Almost everything we do is bespoke in some way or another so there aren’t any existing images to show someone or get a message across.