Modifying the bonsai tree
Posted by Huw,
The back pages of 10281 Bonsai Tree's instructions encourage experimentation to come up with your own foliage variations.
As I mentioned in the set review the ends of the branches holding the foliage can be detached which makes it easy to replace the leaves with your own designs.
So, here are nine I made today, including a goat tree. Some are more attractive and successful than others!
Autumn
Large light orange limbs with orange and yellow leaf pieces.
Elves' Forest
Large purple limbs with pink flowers.
Tropical
Spiky leaves.
I knew the gold palm tree leaves obtained in a play brick box at Skaerbaek fan weekend would come in hand one day!
Springtime
Small lime green limb elements combined with lime green, bright green, and green leaves give this a lush new-grown look.
I've changed the potting soil beads to dark grey 1x1 round plates.
Scary Forest
Large dark green limbs and spiny pieces given this one a sinister look.
Green flowers
I think this is my favourite. It uses dark orange limbs and 6-stem flower stalks with the old-style green flower on top. It took ages to build!
Animals
10281 Bonsai Tree has 100 pink frogs in it, so I thought I'd see what animals I had in sufficient quantity to add to my tree.
White Ninjago snakes and ants
Goats
OK, so I'm just showing off and have gone way too far now :)
I had great fun building these and I'm sure I'll come up with others. I hope the set's designer Nick Vas, aka PrinceGalidor, approves of them. What about you: do you have a favourite? Do you have ideas for interesting elements to use for the foliage?
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72 comments on this article
Fantastic, I am inspired!
Great, now I'm going to have nightmares about snakes and goats growing from trees.
Great stuff! I may end up getting this after all.
They look so great, Huw! Seasonal themes on tree!
If only LEGO goats grew on trees...
Time to do one with the pieces everyone has plenty of: the Brick Separator! :)
You missed out on the pine tree look using olive green grass stalks. :D
Goats :)
For my tree, which heads I have the most..... Harry Potter or skeletons
Great creativity! Ants and snakes wins it for me.
@DualBoot said:
"For my tree, which heads I have the most..... Harry Potter or skeletons"
I'll make it a Batman vs. Spiderman tree. :D
Well, goat bonsai won't be the best as a final effect, but certainly the most expensive !!!
These look fantastic! They really open the door to endless creative possibilities.
Love them all. Now I want this set even more!
Really like the dark green color on your sinister tree. Wonder if dark green would look better than green for the color on the basic leaf design of the original tree?
Such a cool article! My faves: snow snakes and golden palm leaves! ^-^
Goat tree is the best tree. I think I’d try it with it with the red dolly assuming I have enough of them. I really can’t wait to get this though and mess around with parts in my collection.
Autumn or springtime for me
If this set came with that many goats, it'd be higher up on my wishlist.
If the Brickset Awards 2020 would also allow to nominate news articles, this one would definitely win.
Marvellous!
Perfect opertunity for "money doesn't grow on trees"!
Goats in trees is an actual thing. Google it.
Great job Huw! Love the autumn one bit the snake and goat one are hilarious. The scary one is prefect for Halloween. I wasn't going to get this set, you are making me doubt!
That's over $600 of goats right there.
The haunted forest one is my personal favorite, after the ridiculously excess goat tree of course!
Good work, Huw! It's as hard as trying to choose a favourite cookie. Each of them is a feast for the eyes, some a little frighteningly so, but fascinating none the less. I like the sinister tree best. It isn't the best looking, but it makes me draw back, even more than the spiders and snakes. It's like the tree is alive-and not happy. Now we'll all want to buy the set!
I never even knew Lego ants existed until now.
I've just looked on BrickLink and see they fetch about $30 each now! I've had these for years, probably from Lugbulk or somewhere like that.
Springtime! Aaaah...
Now you are now rubbing it off how many goats you have....
Goat tree. Love it. :)
These are great and all but I just have to ask. Why the heck do you have so many goats in your collection?
I wish lego sold goat tree.
I wonder if I could make it look like one of those colorful trees on Felucia? Hmmmm
@BulbaNerd4000 said:
"I wonder if I could make it look like one of those colorful trees on Felucia? Hmmmm"
Or a wookie tree...
Heck, this is BRUTAL, because of goats.
All in all - this set has seemningly infinite opportunities for customization!
I was thinking of a Hitchcock inspired version with birds on all the branches
Great to see the purple one, sod elves though it should be a Jacaranda tree! Lego Grafton Jacaranda Festival!!!
I wasn't really interested in this set but seeing all these variations makes me want it now. I'm thinking Halloween with Skeleton heads or Jack-o-Lantern heads & pumpkins. Maybe some Apple trees or Bananas.
How did you get all these goats? I want one! (No I want all of them)
Very creative.
Is it possible to combine the standard green foliage with a few of the blossoms so that the tree looks as if the buds are just beginning to burst forth in flower?
I was considering going for an Autumn look myself but the spring and especially green flowers looks you pulled off are inspiring. Can't wait to read the instructions and pull off my own design. Great article.
Love the article.
I may do my own lightsaber tree.
Hopefully not repeating someone else’s comment but the last one is truly the GOAT - the Greatest Of All Trees.
That snak-ant tree transcends being a cool Lego thing and is straight up a badass design. The purple leaves look great as well, but I already modified the Tree House with those.
Huw, I may only live a short distance from you, but if someone breaks into your house and steals your goats it wasn't me OK?
I've looked into owning real goats in the future so it pains me that a Lego goat costs more than half the price of a real one XD
The review of this that made me not want it anymore. Mainly because of the frogs… This article has made me want it again!
Huw! Holy smokes. Those are marvelous.
The goat tree made me think of the "vegetable lamb" tree in old herbologies and looks surprisingly good, if pricey. I'm really impressed with how well the white snakes look like trailing chains of blossoms, though!
I think using frogs for buds or blossoms is a pretty good idea, actually. Mixing them with some open flowers might make for an even more lush effect.
Thanks for the extra effort reviewing and then "playing with" this set!
@Huw that snake and ant tree would look like something out of Avatar if you swapped out the pebbles for trans-blue plates, and maybe added a light brick or technic lights underneath to illuminate the pebbles.
All of these are fantastic and very creative, thanks for sharing!
How about a version with various types of Star Wars blasters and blaster pistols for leaves? :-)
My jaw is not on the floor. My jaw went through the floor and is presently just grazing the bedrock layer. That's approx. $900 USD worth of goats. Just casually stuck on a tree for a laugh. I truly believe if the gold leaf experiment used real, 100% pure solid gold, I would not have been as awe-struck.
I'm going to need a minute here to compose myself. Maybe a few.
Great modifications!
Where did you get all those goats???
Initially I didn't think this set was all that impressive, considering its just a branch with a couple leaf elements on it, but after reading this and the review, I think I'd definitely want to get one of these...
The modifications do look great, though as a TFOL I have no where near that many parts in my collection..........
I have a bunch of the cmf banana suit guy.
A bunch.
How about a minifigure head tree?
Nonsensical combinations like these are one thing I really love about LEGO.
I wasn't too interested in this set but now I want to do a "Bone-sai" tree, with bone-branches, skull-fruits, and lava-soil...
Somebody somewhere will make a contest out of this.
@Gataka said:
"Nonsensical combinations like these are one thing I really love about LEGO.
I wasn't too interested in this set but now I want to do a "Bone-sai" tree, with bone-branches, skull-fruits, and lava-soil...
Somebody somewhere will make a contest out of this."
Yes, let's look forward to a 2021 Brickset Best Bonsai Variations contest (once people have a chance to acquire and build and experiment) with various categories like GOAT, horror, etc.
When you mentioned having come up with 9 already I thought, what and how? And now we all want to see many more.
Great job :-) As I prefer GOT to goats, when I get mine I will make a Weirwood tree like the one in Winterfell!
@BrickBoriqueno said:
" @Gataka said:
"Nonsensical combinations like these are one thing I really love about LEGO.
I wasn't too interested in this set but now I want to do a "Bone-sai" tree, with bone-branches, skull-fruits, and lava-soil...
Somebody somewhere will make a contest out of this."
Yes, let's look forward to a 2021 Brickset Best Bonsai Variations contest (once people have a chance to acquire and build and experiment) with various categories like GOAT, horror, etc."
Great minds think alike! You can indeed look forward to one. Perhaps the prizes will include goats :-)
Absolutely brilliant.. although it has made me realise I don't have enough Goats in my lego life
The goat variation is genius, I had a real good laugh and I'm still astonished someone actually has so many LEGO goats! Please tell me the original bonsai review was wrong and the goat variation is actually included in the package, that would definitely be a day one purchase for me! Oh well, one can only dream :)
@Huw said:
" @BrickBoriqueno said:
" @Gataka said:
"Nonsensical combinations like these are one thing I really love about LEGO.
I wasn't too interested in this set but now I want to do a "Bone-sai" tree, with bone-branches, skull-fruits, and lava-soil...
Somebody somewhere will make a contest out of this."
Yes, let's look forward to a 2021 Brickset Best Bonsai Variations contest (once people have a chance to acquire and build and experiment) with various categories like GOAT, horror, etc."
Great minds think alike! You can indeed look forward to one. Perhaps the prizes will include goats :-)
"
If a goat becomes the prize, I will have to get this set to make sure I can enter XD
Wow!
Never seen that many Lego goats in one place!
Huw could sell them and nearly retire on the profits from that many.
The pink frog must go, and if I were to modify it, the first thing I would modify is to change the soil so that they stick together instead of being loose laying over there.
I can't wait to get my bonsai tree set and try some of these designs thank you for your ideas and inspiration
Fantastic effort! I kept scrolling and being amazed you made so many!
I'd already been thinking of this myself, I find the green original a bit too colourful, and that maybe a variation of dark green and olive green could look great, with just some sprinkles of brighter greens.
My modification will be to buy two and add some height / second storey to make it look slightly more complete.
Wow that goat use actually looks really cool
I LOVE these.
That snake and spider tree is so eerie and spooky! I might have to steal that if I ever make a better Hidden Side (proper location, not just theme) display
@JPKuiper said:
"Time to do one with the pieces everyone has plenty of: the Brick Separator! :)
"
It has been done...the photo (or at least a render) is in the instruction book for the bonsai!