Building the LEGO 12 days of Christmas

If you follow me on Social Media then hopefully you caught my #LEGO12DaysOfChristmas photos. I built each of the LEGO 24in1 Advent Calendar models during advent, and at the end a friend suggested I try the 12 Days Of Christmas. I could see it was a challenge that was ever increasing in work and possibly difficulty, but it was such a good challenge that I had to at least start...

Day 1 was easy enough. A Partridge In A Pear Tree. Believe me, by day 4, I knew a lot more about birds than I did to start with...

2 Turtle Doves, 3 French Hens (which turn out to be pretty much regular hens), and 4 Calling Birds - or Colley Birds as the old version of the song went. Blackbirds. We do have a couple of Gold Rings from Lord Of The Rings sets, but no idea where they are, so I kind of cheated...
 

6 Geese A-Laying was the first day I realised this was a big undertaking. I had used up a lot of my 'wings/beaks', but had eggs from the LEGO Angry Birds sets. I wanted them to be easily recognisable, so I went with the type of Geese we usually see in 2016 in the UK - Canada Geese.

The Geese all had to be different, as I was making the models each evening and didn't have hours to search through the LEGO - plus it was Christmas! I was already busy...

I totally cheated the 7 Swans A-Swimming. I freely admit it. But you know it works...

8 Maids A-Milking signalled the end of birds! Yeeeay! That kind of bird anyway... and the start of minifigs. A random selection, but the Diner Waitress worked so well, especially with a carton of milk from Apu's Kwik-E Mart. I just made up the cow - it had 6 udders until my partner pointed out I was a bit over-excitable there...

9 Ladies Dancing and it was my partner's idea to use the LEGO Friends style figures. We also ended up with Anna and Elsa from the Frozen Castle, and even Naida, one of the LEGO Elves.

The handbags had to be done...

10 Lords A-Leaping was where my partner really joined in, and we started to get a bit carried away. We could use real Lords! We found a handful of recognisable Lords, and by 10.30pm had to give it up and go with 'people who might be Lords'...

Making LEGO figures 'Leap' on a tight timescale can be tricky. So we gave the illusion that leaping was imminent...
 

Our Lords are probably one of the most expensive and Lordly collections of  'minifigures depicting Lords' ever. Egyptian Mummy (ruler), King (ruler), John Lennon (MBE), Lord Nelson (actual Lord) , Lord Whimsy (fictitious Lord), Lord (of the Rings), The Penguin (dresses like a Lord), Lord Voldemort (fictitious Lord), Lord Vader (self-proclaimed Lord), LEGO Lester No.112 (a Lord in my eyes).

When you are working with so many minifigures it takes a bit of effort to get them all into visible position, and actually you see a lot of head tops, so you do have to mess about a bit to get the effect you want...

11 Pipers Piping was a bit harder. We had 1 bagpiper and no way of making more, and we didn't know any Pipers. We used anyone potentially musical, a random Bradley Wiggins and a little poetic licence. But they're definitely Pipers!

By now I couldn't actually use my bedside table - which is where I'd stupidly started the models, and I didn't want to move them because it'd spoil continuity.

And they all had to move back for the grand finale.

12 Drummers Drumming

We are both big fans of music, so the temptation was irresistible and we had to have 12 real drummers. We got about 8 without really trying, and I Googled while my partner was completing a project he's wanted to do for ages by building a LEGO drum kit...

No new drummers of note were coming up within the last 20 or 30 years (is this really true?). So I decided it was best to do a run down of notable drummers from the 1960's onwards. It has a heavily UK bias, but so does pop...if you want to find out who they are representing, click on the image for a description or 'answers at the bottom of the page'...

 

And so, here they are all are. Representing far too many hours swapping out minifig heads and balancing characters on on leg so they can stand at a slanted angle...

The LEGO 12 Days Of Christmas...

Now I can have my bedside table back... and start on a new project. After a break...

You can find my The Brick Castle Instagram Feed here...

For anyone who did try to guess, the drummers as shown in order are meant to be: Dave Clarke Of the Dave Clarke 5 and young Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees. Young Keith Moon from The Rolling Stones and Ringo Starr of The Beatles. Ginger Baker of Cream, and Robert Wyatt of Pink Floyd. Representing the 80's we have Phil Collins, Rick Allen of Def Leppard and Sheila E (Prince's backing band). The final row, and the one most people are most likely to get, is Dave Grohl of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, Meg White of The White Stripes and Travis Barker of Blink 182.

Thank you to Tina from The Soup Dragon Says for the challenge...

Please don't nick my photos, it took me ages.

Ask, or have some fun, play with LEGO and make your own...