I forget when we came up with this idea, and we are not the first ones to come up with it, but it has been a fun one to explore. LEGO® Stamping!
What, you ask, is LEGO® Stamping? Imagine using LEGO® as a stamp, and you’ve got the idea. To get started you need a plate, 16×16 is a good size, and doots, aka 1×1 round plates. I’ve seen others using tiles, they just create a different look. And you don’t get the logo in your painting.
How we did it
Decide on a design, keeping in mind that the image you create at the end is a flipped version of the one on the plate.
Paint
Choose your paint. For Little Man, I had him use washable tempera. Yes, I use condiment bottles, 97¢ at Walmart, for paint. He can squirt out paint easily, and I can buy the larger refill size of paints and refill as needed. Also, I only get primary colors, black, white and brown. Every other color can be mixed and it limits the number of bottles I have to store.
If you have different colors, you might want to do the colors individually, letting the paint dry between stamps. Or you can just put the different colors on the appropriate doots for a single stamping. It does depend on how detailed your design is.
I did this with acrylic and oil paints, and the effects are different. You could see the logo with the acrylic and oil paints the best, and the texture was amazing with the oil paints.
Final Steps
When you’ve got your colors mixed in the type of paint you want to use, and you’ve figured out if you are doing it all in 1 stamp or a stamping per color, you are ready to apply paint to your doots. We found that these foam brushes worked really well.
We successfully washed all the various paints off the LEGO®. The tempera washed off with just water and a brush for crevices. Soap was needed for the other paints. We did find that washing the LEGO® while the doots were still attached to the plate was easiest, versus removing them and then washing.
The putting of doots on the plate takes a bit of hand strength and even my hands got tired after attaching a row. Having a separator is super useful and saves fingernails when removing them.
The pixelated effect of the doots and their spacing is quite limiting, and I imagine someone out there could create some amazing designs with them.
Share your creations on Instagram or Facebook and tag #LEGOstamping and #LEGOart.
