For this years 'May The LUGs Be With You' event we have gathered together the might of 6 LEGO User Groups from around the world to take part in a build challenge to celebrate Star Wars Day on May the 4th.

The event is online and Free so you are more than welcome to check it out and to take part in the voting on the entries HERE.

May The Force Be With You. Always.

As part of our ongoing mission to engage with other LEGO communities in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration we’ve teamed up with Brick by Brick - A LEGO Building Community (BBB) to feature their build challenges over here - hopefully to encourage a few of you to tip out those bricks & come up with some creations to share here with your fellow sluggers. BBB run three regular challenges during the week - A 24 Hour Build Challenge with a different theme each week, A 48 Hour Minifigure Vignette Challenge with varying themes and baseplate size and The Dirty Dozen - A 12 piece weekly mini build challenge. Themes & results will be posted in both groups with a voting poll in place over on BBB.

Brick By Brick’s own values and beliefs are aligned with SLUG as a family friendly online LEGO community so we hope some of them will join us here to grow the LUG further. A few SLUG members are already part of BBB too so we know SLUG members will receive a warm welcome at BBB should they wish to join - just like new members here can expect when they join us. We look forward to help, encourage & support each other together going forward.

How do you prepare to build?

Some old school types might tip all the parts at once into a pile and just rummage through them for each step.
Whilst that prolongs your build and can give satisfaction when you find the part you're looking for it can also cause frustration for other builders.

I find most people tend to open the numbered bags on larger builds one at a time to avoid being overwhelmed and this seems to work for them.

Then there is 'knolling'. The art of laying out all the parts in a set on the table in a pattern before starting to put anything together. I'd heard of this technique before but never actually known anyone do it so I thought I'd give it a try with a relatively small set, Creator 3in1 31112.

You can see the results in the picture below. It was kind of satisfying to create it and it looks kind of cool now. I imagine it's going to make building quicker but the time taken to sort the parts beforehand probably negates that.

In summary, whilst I enjoyed giving it a go I wouldn't dream of doing this for a larger set, not least because it would take up an enormous amount of space, and I think I'll probably just stick to pouring the bags out in my building tray and having a rummage for the parts as usual. And then after searching for 3 or 4 times for one small part I'll go back to the bags to find it still stuck in the corner of one of them. Always. ​

Our public group over on Facebook has seen some fantastic growth and engagement over the last 7 days.

Active members are up. Posts, comments and engagements are up. I put this down to the influx of new members we've just had and them learning what a fun, friendly bunch we are.

​Building a community is more than just providing a space for people to come together. You have to fill that space with quality content and activity that they will want to interact with. You need to make the space a safe, inclusive one, one where they will feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas as well as being able to openly comment on others posts.

​I'm proud of the community we are building here at Sheffield LUG and I'd like you to be a part of it. You don't need to be a member to be a part of our Facebook group: it's open to all so pop over and take a look.

​Sheffield LEGO User Group public Facebook Group

Our first ever physical get together as a LUG......more