Matt Margini

@marginibuilds

AFOL, teacher, LEGO horologist. Commissions: marginibuilds AT gmail.com
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Weeks posts
Honored to have won the #brickscalibur 2025 “Heist of the Century” category with my LEGO co-conspirator @saladbricks !!! It feels especially awesome and humbling given the quality of the builders involved in all categories, including this one — there is some AMAZING stuff on that Results page, and I highly encourage you to check it out. I was also floored to discover that I won the “Royal Poet” award for storytelling!! I think I’m gonna have to enter this contest every year, with builds of increasingly absurd and labor-intensive scale. Thankful to @saladbricks for helping me make this ridiculous vision come to life!!
72 7
3 months ago
OF MICE AND MAGIC Built: November 2025-January 2026 A more detailed look at my portion of the Brickscalibur entry I made with @saladbricks ! I started with the faces of the characters, which were a joy to make. They also… established the scale, lol. And the scale is huge: from the back this thing looks like a minifigure-scale stadium, as @tolgacity remarked when he saw it, which is kind of ironic given that it depicts a very cloistered, intimate interior. But YOLO! The larger scale meant more detail was possible, and I really enjoyed designing the tablecloth, the mouse, the fireplace, and especially the microscale scene where you can see the castle they’re robbing (via remote-controlled mice — WFH crime) in the distance. @saladbricks and I really wanted the builds to feel like a matching pair, so his also includes a similar micro-scale landscape with the wizard’s tower in the distance. To achieve the round wall (so many gray tiles…) and the tower roof, I basically used the same geometry that I used to make the Tiffany Lamp, this time turned inside out. Aside from turtle and dog noses, my favorite NPU is probably the dismembered minidoll wine glass. Just another touch of the macabre in a scene that already contains a memento mori and a hungry necronomicon. #lego #legomoc #legocastle #brickscalibur
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3 months ago
“Of Mice and Magic” A duo build by @saladbricks and me for Brickscalibur’s “Heist of the Century” category! Part 1 (top) by @saladbricks , Part II (bottom) by @marginibuilds They said it was impregnable. The King’s Vault, bursting with gold, a horde amassed by sword and pen — by conquest and centuries of unremitting taxation. Such was the gaudy taste of His Grace Edmund XVIII that even the floor was paved with ingots, their sheen dulled only slightly by the gilded boots of trusted (if not particularly attentive) guardsmen assigned to watch the vault ‘round the clock. It was boring, steady work. They told jokes about a witless carpenter, complained about watered-down mead. But as a balmy summer evening passed into a tranquil summer night, they never quite recognized that, like a melting glacier, the horde was eroding, one coin at a time. Right under their feet, the castle mice were hard at work, dropping gold into an aperture of otherworldly origin. They fed the maw as though they were possessed — because, of course, they were. Meanwhile, across hills and dales and the King’s quiet domain, a tower loomed in the distance, illuminated within by a sorcerous, unnatural blue. Plink, plonk, PLUNK! Coins, dozens of coins, rained down upon the table from a ring of unholiness at the top of the room. “I told ye it’d work!” she cackled. “Mama’s little helpers! What if they cooked us breakfast, Cyrus?” The wizard chortled. “Unlike you, my dear friend, I wouldn’t dine on what swamp creatures or ensorcelled rodents bring me.” He paused. “But I must say, they make excellent thieves.” #lego #legomoc #legocastle #brickscalibur
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4 months ago
2025 was a big year in the @marginibuilds workshop! The lamp was my favorite build of the year, but I’m also proud of the sangria pitcher — another effort to capture the difficult curvature and ornate detailing of a real-world object — and the gargoyles, which were my first foray into the mysterious and highly addictive art of character building. In 2025, I also showed my stuff at a LEGO convention for the first time and achieved 10,000 supporters — though not, unfortunately, final approval from LEGO 😭😭 — for the cuckoo clock! Some literally and figuratively huge builds are coming up. Stay tuned 😎 #lego #moc #2025
264 6
4 months ago
WIP: Laughing Witch The other half of the odd couple I’m working on. Usually a tough hang, but not in this case. Comparisons to Wicked are expected and inevitable, but the REAL inspiration is clearly Grunty — iykyk. #moc #legomoc #wip #legolife #legocastle
74 2
5 months ago
WIP: Laughing Wizard For me, Thanksgiving break means making a nose out of a dog. Taking a break from gargoyle upgrades — a lot going on there lol — to do some characters for a new COLLABORATIVE build that I’m super excited about. What’s so funny? You’ll have to wait and see… #moc #legomoc #wip #brickscalibur
77 3
5 months ago
Work in Progress: “Woe” Three gargoyles aren’t enough! I’m working on some massive upgrades to the build, and one of them is a new addition to the group. It will represent the 4th medieval humor (black bile) and generally bring down the vibe, lol. Woe is a tough hang. Thinking about a memento mori / “alas, poor Yorick” situation: Woe holding the skull of a long-deceased gargoyle friend. Happy belated Halloween I guess? #wip #moc #lego #legomoc #gargoyle
76 2
6 months ago
The lamp won too 🫡 @brickfanevent
656 16
9 months ago
Honored to win TWO awards at my first Lego con! “Best Artwork” for Santorini Sunset and “Best Lighting” for the Tiffany Lamp!!! @brickfanevent
176 6
9 months ago
72 1
9 months ago
TIFFANY LAMP Built: Summer 2025 A Tiffany-style stained glass lamp made entirely* out of LEGO bricks. Ok, not entirely: the light bulbs and sockets are from Home Depot. But the rest of the lamp is LEGO. I’ve always been fascinated by Tiffany lamps, and one of the things I love most about them is their organicism. The real ones often include nature motifs (dragonflies, flowers, etc.) in flowing, asymmetrical patterns, meticulously hand-placed. Lo and behold, that kind of form is not easy to replicate in rectangular plastic bricks — which is what drew me to the project. (That and I think I’m also just obsessed with making fancy LEGO antiques.) My version is more geometric — and to be honest, more TGI Fridays — than other Tiffany lamps I’ve seen, in part because I got really attached to the patterns I was able to make with transparent bricks and humble 1 x 6 train fences. But I tried to give a nod to the naturalism of the original artform with one particular embellishment: the goopy, hopefully Art Nouveau-ish details at the bottom of the shade are made up of a bunch of manta rays. VINTAGE manta rays, mind you — I think the one I got with an Aquazone set 30 years ago is in there. I loved designing this thing for so many reasons. It was a technical challenge as well as an aesthetic one. The pole in the middle had to be strong enough to hold up a huge amount of plastic in the shade *while also* accommodating the power cord. The stained glass panels needed structural reinforcement that would also block as little light as possible. Even getting the manta rays on there securely was a big pain. But ultimately? Worth it. #lego #moc #legodesign #tiffany #tiffanyandco #tiffanylamp
1,106 61
9 months ago
SANGRIA PITCHER Built: Spring-Summer 2025 We have a bunch of these on top of the fridge, and it was only a matter of time before they became the focus of my inexplicable drive to brickify ornate objects that involve complicated shaping and way too much pattern repetition. (Wait til you see my next build!) The pitcher is assembled from *40* slices that make it almost seamlessly round, at least on the bottom. Bigger than the real thing, in part because designing in Studio sometimes makes me lose sight of physical scale lol — but I guess that also means more sangria. I’m really, really proud of that spoon. #lego #legomoc #legolife #moc #legodesign #sangria
247 16
9 months ago