Crafting a Mini Daiso Shop Inspired by Oxford Blocks Stickers

 

Hey brick fans,

I just spent 3 days making a little Daiso shop.  Daiso is a discount store chain in Asia that is similar to North American dollar stores. This 16x32 stud modular building was inspired by a sticker sheet from an Oxford Blocks building block set.

It's from a Daiso truck set that I bought while visiting South Korea.  Here's a review I made for that set: https://bricktoyreviews.blogspot.com/2025/09/oxford-blocks-daiso-truck-building.html.

Here's a few more pics of my custom Daiso shop.

I made it from spare bricks in my stash, a smorgasbord of white bricks, panels and some masonry bricks.  I used some red plates as accent pieces around the building's top perimeter. I used two of the three Daiso logo stickers on the exterior and one inside the shop.

The Daiso shop has two employees, the store manager and her assistant.  Also pictured is the delivery drive of the Oxford Blocks Daiso truck.

The Daiso shop conforms to my city building standards which is constructed on a raised baseplate and has the yellow tactile bricks known as tenji blocks on the sidewalk.

I used a simple light brick placed on the underside of the removable roof to illuminate the shop's interior.

Here's some interior shots.  I placed shelving with different types of product on the walls and center of the shop.

There's a self checkout by the entrance with the store logo visible on the wall.

Although it's currently set up as a single storey building, I have futureproofed it by adding an elevator shaft in case I decide to add more floor space later.

Here's the shop added to my city layout.   Let me know what you think of the shop.  Would you have done anything different?   Let me know in the comments, thanks for looking!

Bye for now!

How to make a New Hashima style technic cube

 

Hey brick fans!  Welcome back to another tutorial!

Today, we will build a technic cube, New Hashima style!  New Hashima is a huge Lego cyberpunk city with many collaborators building their own unique sections and adding them to the collective.

Here's the history behind New Hashima with a lot of pictures of the cool setup: https://bricknerd.com/home/the-story-of-new-hashima-how-the-colossal-lego-cyberpunk-city-came-to-be-7-17-23

The underlying structure of the Cyberpunk style city is supported by a series of large cubes that are made primarily of technic bricks and technic pins.  Once assembled, they provide the framework and the support for the towering creations.

Here are some screen shots I found on Flikr (just google New Hashima cubes to see more examples).

Initially the instructions to create the cube were posted on Simon Liu's flikr page, but then they were deleted.

Only to resurface as a link on a Eurobricks forum:  https://uofi.app.box.com/s/ykq9ilqy7cgfljxqkjdcc5hlgyzvyy46

I've taken a look at them and have tried to create a version that is a bit simpler and uses less parts, hopefully while achieving the same objective of modular strength and support.  If my setup works, I will create a larger refined version of the New Hashima style cube.   

My plan is to incorporate the usage of the cubes into my growing  Lumibricks Cyberpunk city, perhaps under the Lumibricks Izakaya, because it's looking kind of small next to the other towers.

Here's my parts list

standard technic pins (x8)

longer technic pins (x16)

2x8 plates (x16)

2x2 plates (x16)

2x4 plates (x8)

1x16 technic bricks (x24)

1x2 technic brick (x8)

2x2 tiles (x8)

Using these parts, it will make a cube that is 18 studs wide, 18 studs deep and 16 studs high.  You can save some money by using Lego compatible parts as I've done here.

Here's my method to create the cube

Step 1.  Make the beams and assemble them into squares.

Take one of the standard technic pins and insert it into the last hole of a 1x16 technic brick.  Now, take two of the longer technic pins and insert them into the third and fifth hole.  Take another 1x16 technic brick and snap it over the other.

Repeat the above steps eight times and assemble four of the beams  to make a square as shown in the picture below.

Now I'm going to secure the beams to each other by attaching a 2x4 plate to each of the corners.

Do the above two steps twice and you will have two squares.

Flip the squares over.  One of the squares will be the bottom of the cube and the other will be the top.

Now, take the pieces show above to make a support beam.  Put two 1x16 technic beams together and press a 2x2 tile at each end.  Then press together two 2x2 plates and place them on the underside of the technic beam, at both ends.  Then attach the 1x2 technic brick to the plates.

Repeat the process three more time and you will have 4 assembled support beams.

Take one of the support beams and place it 90 degrees to the bottom square, as shown above.  Press it into the protruding technic pins to lock it in.

Take the top square and lock it into the technic pins as well.

Now, repeat the process three more times for the remainder of the supporting beams.

To finish off the cube, add some 2x8 plates at each top corner of the cube. 

Take 4 more 2x8 plates and fill in the rest.

Repeat the process of applying the 2x8 plates to the bottom of the cube.

Alright, the small cube (18x18x16 )was a test just to validate the design.  I'm probably going to need to double the amount of 1x16 technic bricks, add a few more technic pins , and use extra 2x4 or 2x8 plates to make a full sized cube to match the New Hashima standard.

Ok, thanks for staying to the end of my blog post!  Let me know if you plan on using the New Hashima style cube in your city!  See you in my next one, bye!

How I Made an Animated Billboard for my Lumibricks Cyberpunk City (Part Two)

 

Hey brick fans, welcome back!

This is the second part of my mini tutorial on how I made an animated billboard for my Lumibricks Cyberpunk city.   If you missed the first part of the tutorial, you can find it here: https://bricksandfigs.blogspot.com/2025/08/how-i-made-animated-ai-billboard-for-my.html.

In my previous blog post, we looked at image and video generation using the free AI tools like Dreamina and Canva.  At this point, I have the saved video as an mp4 format file on my laptop.  So now I need to create the actual display which is what we will address in this blog post.

Using an old cell phone as a display

Some of you might have guessed correctly that I'm serving up the billboard video from a cell phone.   I've gone through a lot of cell phones over the years and when they get too slow, I replace them with the latest and greatest.  All these old phones inevitably end up in a drawer where they collect dust.   It occurred to me that I could give them new life and purpose by serving as the billboard displays for my cyberpunk city.

I don't have to buy new LED/LCD display panels, I just reuse what I already have.  I'm sure most people will have an old phone somewhere and even if you don't you probably know someone that will give you their old phone.

It doesn't even matter if the screen is cracked or whatnot, as long as the phone will power on, you are in business.

To prep the phone, I did a factory reset on them just to clean them up.   Most phones will include a video app by default and this is what we will use to display the video, which you will recall is in mp4 format. The format is pretty standard across all video players, so you shouldn't have a problem to display the custom video.

Copy the video to the phone

After prepping the phone, you'll need to copy the video file from your laptop over to the phone.  You can either transfer the file via WiFi / shared drive or via a physical USB cable to do a file transfer.  I imagine the process is pretty much the same if you copy files from phone to phone.  I won't go into that too much, as there are lots of resources on the web that address that.   Put the video file where ever it's meaningful to you, such as a Download or Gallery folder.

You should be able to launch the video automatically just by clicking on it, and it should use the phones default video player to play it.   You can either display your video in either landscape or portrait mode as the picture above shows you.

To get the best effect, I crank the phones display brightness to the max.  You want the visual to be as bright as possible, especially if you are displaying it in a cyberpunk city, where you want to achieve the maximum effect. Because we've created a loop file, when you launch the video it should play for the full duration that you set it at.

If you have multiple old phones like I have, you might consider running different videos on each phone.  It's really up to you, how many videos you want in your city.

Creating a brick built stand for your phone

In this next section, we will look at creating the stand for the billboard.  There is no one size fits all stand, so each one that you make is custom fitted to your own phone.  The design is also completely up to you, but I will discuss some of the technical considerations here.

The first thing is the cradle or box, as I like to call it.  That's the brick built part where the phone will sit into.  It should fit the dimensions of the phone and should be bricked on three sides leaving the back and bottom open.  The back is open for ventilation. Not saying your phone will overheat, but just in case. The bottom of the box should be accessible if you want to run a charging cable into the phone as an option.

This is what the back looks like.  I just used whatever spare plates and bricks I have on hand.

My Samsung J6 phone inside the box.  The dimensions are 11 studs wide and 20 studs long.

At the top of the box, I've placed some plates to stop the phone from toppling out when I put the stand upright.  Also it will hide any of the phones top widgets.  Towards the bottom of the box, I've used 2 1x4 jumper plates.  This not only holds the phone in, but makes it hides the bottom widgets and makes it easy to pop off, so I can access the phone.

I will typically turn on the phone, launch the video, get it into the desired orientation, then put the phone into the box and secure the plates.

I further customised the bottom plate just to match the Coke ad that is playing.

Finally I constructed the stand in which the box will sit atop.  Additionally, it serves to elevate the billboard. Make sure that it is sturdy enough so that the phone box doesn't topple over.

This is just an example of what I've done, but yours can be whatever design you like. 

Ok that concludes our little tutorial of the animated display.  Hope you've found this blog post useful!

If you'd like to get any of the cool Cyberpunk Lumibricks sets, don't forget to use my affilliate code itsnotlego to save on your purchases from their website:  https://www.lumibricks.com/?ref=tN9EBQmQ

Thanks for looking, bye!