A Host of Ye Olde Tapestries

tapestry [tap-uh-stree] - n. a fabric consisting of a warp upon which colored threads are woven by hand to produce a design, often pictorial, used for wall hangings, furniture coverings, etc.

The first is of a unicorn by Flickr user, jackiebritton. My favorite parts of this one include the shading of the back legs and the slope parts used to insert the unicorn horn.

Here's a mosaic found in Legoland, Windsor taken by Flickr user, Derringdos. I like the use of only five colors.



Majita Grguric made this Black Falcon mosaic, but unlike the tapestries here, this one is studs up, opposed to SNOT. The shading in the grey is just superb, though.


NewRight made this smaller tapestry of a castle. This one is probably my favorite out of the lot as the mist and clouds are really a great touch, as well as the color of the trees and the slopes at the top of the castle.


Flickr user, Daniel Z "DNL", created a hunting scene. This one is interesting by its use of multiple perspectives (with the tower and people). Once again, you can notice the little shading of the side of the tower and further away legs of the horse that make the mosaic great, as well as that he used both sideways and right side up SNOT techniques. It is a bit odd that the tower's top is not included inside the tapestry, though.

Bluesecrets made both of these tapestries, of which the one on the bottom won the category of best tapestry in the 2008 Colossal Castle Contest VI on Classic-Castle. The first is a recreation of her avatar, which is very smll, but effective. The second is of a knight. The scattering of colors the is really great, and the clouds are really spectacular too.

Sources:
- dictionary.com

Lo! A Lovely Library!

Benjamin Jakobsen (Bentoft) made this mosaic-filled library for the Colossal Castle Contest at Classic-Castle.com.

It includes these gold-tinged stained-glass windows: 

I wonder if one of those books is a LEGO book?  ;-)

Warning: Cuteness Ahead!

I run into periods of time where it's hard to keep up with this blog, but Bruce always keeps me on my toes!

About these first ones, by Brickshelf user Elena, he says they are simple but fun, and that he particularly likes the dragon:

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

   

 

They are all so super-cute!  I notice some clever techniques on the rabbits, too.  There are transparent bricks used for slight shading, little lever bits for eye brow highlights, and grill plates on the carrots for texture.

 

Bruce also sent a link to Pete W.'s photo of a LEGO mosaic "with added 3-D fish, on the stairway to Hobbyco's second level."  I like the little sea horses.  They're so.... cute!



 

Castle-y Goodness

Check out the mosaics all over this gorgeous room by Etzel87.  I especially love that center square. 

Sanctuary Overview, by Etzel87

Another gorgeous interior is this Room at Toberg by Benjamin Jakobson (bentoft):

Room at Toberg, by Benjamin Jakobson

The Room at Toberg was an entry for the Colossal Castle Contest at Classic-Castle.com.  You can find the categories and rules here. 

Sirens-Of-Titan's Castle Mosaics

I love to see bits of mosaics and patterns incorporated into larger LEGO creations. Alex P. (Sirens-Of-Titan) has been making some incredibly neat castle scenes over the past year, and my favorite parts are always the bits of mosaics that he incorporates into the design. These bits can be found on floors, walls, windows, and doors, and add lots of visual interest to the larger creation.

One of my favorite examples is in his Tower of the Arcane, where mosaics are used as pictoglyphs that hold secrets of magic:



Another one of my favorites is the City of Omurtag, which features mosaics running up, down, and all around its walls and floors.



The throne room for that Dwarven City is also covered with mosaicky goodness:



And finally, here is an image that shows mosaics used for a rug as well as for stained-glass windows:



Be sure to check out Alex's photostream for all sorts of fantastic castle MOCs. I also collected some of the best examples of his incorporations of mosaics into a flickr gallery, which you can see here.

Mosaics at the Legoland Discovery Center!

Ok, so I recently stopped by the Legoland Discovery Center for my fourth time because the attendees of Brickworld 2011 got free coupons (and get 10% off at the gift shop!)! Coming back with a mindset to snap photos, I got a lot of photos of mosaics! Enjoy. ;-D

So first up we have a lot of castle pictures...


These sheild heraldry mosaics were at the beginning of the dragon ride and were pretty sweet. Following with the dragon theme...



...these were mosaics that were found during the dragon ride. The first photo turned out really nicely while the other one is not so great, as you can tell. It was quite difficult to get them while riding. =) I think these were my favorite ones. The glowed quite nicely in the dark.

Continuing on...


We also found this cartoony mosaic and was pretty neat.

Moving on away from Castle...




All these mosaics were found by the bathrooms. There were 2 day camps eating lunch at this time I took them, so they didn't turn out exactly like I wanted them to, but I'm hoping they're still easy to look at.

Across from the bathrooms by the "Model Workshop" section, we had some more "artistic" mosaics.

Now I'm sure that second one is Van Gogh's Starry Night, but I can't tell what the first one is. (If anyone knows, leave a comment or email me at mosaicbricks@gmail.com). The one below is the Mona Lisa, but didn't turn out that great due to a TON of glare.

*** Note, thanks to Bruce N H and rjg173 for letting me know the first one is "The Scream" by Edvard Munch.


So, yeah! There you go! There was one extra mosaic, but it had even more glare so I figured it wasn't even worth it. The interview with Ben Caulkins is coming up soon. Thanks for reading!

Classic Castle. The site, and the themes!

Recently the winners for the 8th Annual Colossal Castle Contest (CCC) on classic-castle.com have been announced here! WOO!

Speaking of classic castle, I found a pair of mosaics of the Black Falcon and Forestmen crests built by Siercon and Coral on flickr.

--------

Really great mosaics! Congrats to the winners of the contest, and go Forestmen!

Sir Build-a-Lot - Esquire of Legoland!

Registration for BW11 got me thinking of my experience last year of going to BW10. There were a ton of cool mosaics there! I was looking around on the web, and I don't know how I missed this mosaic...

MOCpages user, Chris Phipson who posted a recap of what happened at BW that year, had a photo of this great SNOT tapestry. I can't tell it is based off an actual flag, or coat-of-arms of sorts (I don't know, maybe I'm just dumb ;0 ), but it looks great. Not sure who the actual builder is though...



I looked through pages and pages of the flickr stream of BW, but could not find the builder. (If you are out there, or know who built it, please come forth!)

By the way, I think I'll continue posting a couple of the mosaics I missed from BW10 as well as continuing our mini-series on Official Lego Mosaic Sets, not to mention, I'm planning another interview! Stay tuned...