Part of owning a Lego set is working out what you can rebuild it into after you have finished. This is one of those stories. The set in question was the Chinese Temple Fair which I told you about way back here
This set is actually not mine, but my wife's so this story starts with her. She tells me that she doesn't have the ability to just make stuff up, that she needs instructions if she is going to produce something. I didn't believe her and leaving her with a pile of bricks I wandered off pretty confident that if left alone she was going to come up with something.
And she certainly did, and something way better than I would have come up with - It was this
It was whimsical, it not at all what I expected given the pieces she had, although it made amazing use of the colour variations of what was going on - and there was something in the legs that made me think of Big Bird.
I mentioned that this to her and wandered off again, when I came back a little while later she was working on a Bird Bird head, but she had given up as she couldn't quite get it to work with the pieces of this set. I asked if I could take that head and make something with it, and I came up with this
There is something a bit South American about this one rather than African so maybe these are Dolls of the world. As you can see I used the basic structure that my wife had set up for me but made my own flourishes - the psychedelic eyes, the chicken (actually turkey according to rebrickable) legs on the breast plate and the leaves on the shoes are my favourites.
The game then turned to how many of these can I make...
Back to the circular hoop for a face concept, but with very spindly little arms, I like the colouring on this one the a lot, the touches of gold and dark green works, and the unusual for Lego shades of brown give it something a little different.
And then it time for the final attempt - this one is probably the most Chinese of all the dolls - the personal highlight for me are the tassles on the head dress, again unusual for Lego. The Legs are probably the weak point in this one, but I was really starting to run out of useful pieces.
I never expected that I would be building these little figures from that set and that is one of the things I love about Lego, it's the surprises that it comes up with - yeah the offical sets are cool and I enjoy those but there is something to be said for sitting down with no idea of what you are going to end up with and just starting - even if you need a little helping hand from others.
