Friends Advent Calendar - Day 11
Posted by MeganL,
After yesterday's sugar rush, it's time to open today's door. Actually, if that table is for the elves, and considering how small they are - if one of them ate just one cookie, can you imagine the sugar high? No wonder those elves can be so productive! Let's see if today is another (hopefully less violent) example of the elves' labours.
The elves have been busy. Today's build is a painting station, and the elves are working on a seasonal train. I love the use of the gold roller skates and the smaller red pieces effectively represent the locomotive. This is the first use of the paintbrush that I remember seeing in a Friends set. It would have been nice to have the tip of the paintbrush be one of the colours of the train, but that's a minor point.
The instructions on the calendar show this build flipped; I purposely turned the build this way to show off the train better as well as to show the top of the paintbrush.
With this Santa's workshop theme, this calendar is *almost* feeling like a City calendar, and I mean that in a good way. At 19 pieces (4 spares), this was another nice build.
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It looks good, but the driver cabin is assymetrical, if that is a general headlight brick. How does it look from the other side?
Loving the builds from the Elf shop in this advent, also can I just say that the paintbrush with no print is a very uncommon piece, only coming in this set and the 80104 Lion Dance
I think the idea is that, if you only view the train from its right side, the headlight brick back looks like a window in the cab. The other three sides of the cab aren’t viewable from that side, so it’s unimportant what they look like if my theory is correct. Of course, if you actually plan to play with the train, everything falls apart because you are going to see all four sides, and there’s really no way to build it so it looks normal at that scale. Last year’s Hogwarts Express had a major advantage in that the engine is more streamlined, where this is a Western style train with a free-standing cab.
It's the first plain brown brush in a Friends set, but the decorated one with the green tip has appeared several times, for example in last year's 41365. It usually seems to be Emma that's the painting Friend.
The cab would have looked far better and have been symmetrical had they used a 1x1 brick with a round technic hole.
@Minifig290 said:
"Loving the builds from the Elf shop in this advent, also can I just say that the paintbrush with no print is a very uncommon piece, only coming in this set and the 80104 Lion Dance"
Also 71043 Hogwarts Castle and the 2019 Diagon Alley GWP
"The instructions on the calendar show this build flipped; I purposely turned the build this way to show off the train better as well as to show the top of the paintbrush."
I assumed the gold piece was supposed to be a paint can, and so put the brush in bristles-first.
@TheOtherMike:
That depends if you’re serious about painting or not. Storing brushes on their bristles damages them by deforming or bending the bristles. That’s a great way to destroy expensive brushes (which you’ll own if you actually are serious about painting). However, storing wet brushes bristles-up is also bad, as the water won’t drain out of the collar and will instead absorb into the handle, causing it to swell and stretch out the collar. This can lead to the entire collar coming loose from the handle, either falling off or just getting wobbly. If he brush is big enough to have a hole in the handle, it should be stored by hanging it from a peg. For smaller brushes, horizontal is a safer option.
The first thing my daughter said when putting this together was that she wished there was some paint on the bristles of the paint brush.
Loving the workshop builds for the elves. But, the use of 1x4 plates instead of 2x4 plates for the table tops just to up the piece count of the set is quite cheap. The tables are too unstable/crooked this way unless you attach everything to a larger plate to stabilize after it's all built.
@PurpleDave: I was also assuming the can still had paint in it, so less "storage" and more "still in use."
@TheOtherMike :
That’s apparently another no-no as you can’t get the paint out of the last little bit of bristle before the collar. If there’s any other wrong ways to treat paint brushes, I must not have been caught doing them, because that’s all I can remember. Oh, except my dad’s explanation for the difference between paint brushes for water-based paint, and paint brushes for oil-base paint. He said if they’re for oil-based paint, that means the way you clean them is to leave them soaking in turpentine in the garage for a week before throwing them in the trash.
I just remembered two more. Don't bother cleaning epoxy brushes (just throw them out), and don't paint with the brush your boss uses to apply real gold leaf (no, I did not actually do that...but I did bring him that brush when he asked for "a paintbrush").