Gracen’s little weekly play date buddy turned 4 today, which called for another homemade gift. Like almost all of our expat friends here in Kuwait, he and his family will be headed home for the summer shortly, so we wanted to make him something he could easily take along and hopefully use during the journey back to Canada. Since he and Miss G play with LEGO pretty much every time they’re together, we figured a portable LEGO kit would make a great gift.
I had lots of different ideas about how we could put one together, but when Grae and I spotted this old school metal lunchbox in H&M a few weekends ago, I immediately remembered the LEGO lunchboxes I saw on If Only They Would Nap last Christmas. I knew I wanted to put ours together a little differently, but overall, a portable LEGO kit in a lunchbox is what we would make.
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Besides the metal lunchbox, we collected a large LEGO building plate, some good scissors, a sanding sponge, some mounting squares, a piece of thick white felt, our favourite ever craft glue, and a bin of basic LEGO bricks. Then it was time to get started. Since Gracen was at summer camp this morning, I did the majority of the project on my own which made it super quick, but had she been home, there would have been plenty of jobs for her to help with.
First, a cut the building plate down to fit in the lunchbox’s lid. I was a little worried about how it would cut, but it actually wasn’t too hard at all. I just went nice and slow, concentrating on cutting as straight as possible.
Next, I trimmed the corners to make them rounded and sanded both the corners and the cut edges to ensure that they were smooth.
When it came to adhering the base plate to the lunch kit, I wasn’t sure what to do at first. I did go and check out several glues, but the few that I thought would hold had nasty warnings of cancer and toxins and poisoning on the bottles – obviously not something I wanted to use for a kid’s gift. After giving it some thought, I decided to use mounting squares instead. I use them to hang all sorts of things around the house instead of drilling holes into our concrete walls, and they hold really well. Plus they are removable should Miss G’s little friend ever want to remove the building plate from the lunchbox and use the two pieces separately.
I probably didn’t need this many, but I decided to be safe rather than sorry and applied 9 mounting squares to the base plate, pressing each one down well to ensure a good stick.
I then removed the paper backings and carefully centred the plate inside the lunchbox’s lid, once again pressing it down firmly to ensure a good hold.
Next, I laid the lunchbox onto a large piece of white felt and traced around it. Using a sharp pair of scissors, I cut just inside the line I’d drawn to make the felt piece a little bit smaller than the box.
I then adhered the felt to the bottom of the lunch kit using a very thin layer of Aleene’s Tacky Glue. The hope is that the felt layer will cut down on some of the noise created by the LEGO bricks clanging against the metal.
While I did seriously consider cutting out another strip of felt to line the sides of the box, I ended up just leaving it as is.
After a little bit of drying time, I dumped the entire contents of the bin of LEGO pieces into the lunch kit {sort of deflating to see how little actually comes in one of those big bins, isn’t it?!} I could have left the kit like this, but I didn’t like the fact that the building would have to take place on the sloped lid in order to keep all of the LEGO bricks in the main part of the lunch kit. I tried a few things {none of which worked well}, and finally settled on creating a little ‘fence’.
I still had plenty of my base plate left, so I cut out a thin piece to fit across the width of the lunchbox, trimming the corners and sanding the edges just as before.
Then I simply placed the new plate piece into the bottom part of the lunch kit when it was lying down and gently tilted it upwards so that the lid was flat against the table. Sure enough, the LEGO fence worked exactly as I hoped it would. The little ridge around the edge of the lunchbox kept it in place and held the pieces in place as we built below. Of course, you could also just use the ‘fence’ piece for building on too if you prefer.
Just for fun, we decided to create the birthday boy’s initials on the building plate so he’d have a little surprise when it opened it.
We added a little tag to it like we always do, and it was ready to go.
Miss G was very excited to give the birthday boy his gift and now I’m thinking I should probably make another one so we too can build with LEGO during our travels. ☺
This is really cool idea! Never seen before! Need to make for my sons or for presents! Thanks!
Great little kit; fabulous idea. Well done!
What a wonderful idea! I love the photos you provided along with the instructions.Thanks for the always inspiring posts.
Love, love, love this.
Fantastic idea! I pinned it and plan to make it for my grandson soon. Thanks.
This is awesome!! I really want to make this for my son.
I couldn’t find a smiliar metal box but I did find a transparent SGD $2 and made a lego kit for my girl.
The plus point of plastic is lighter and I printed her current favorite Frozen picture to cover the lego base plate. Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful kit!
They dell these boxes at H&M clothstores
Would hot glue work to adhere the Lego strip onto the lid?
Just did it and it worked!
What a great idea and would make a nice gift too! Thanks for sharing!
Do they make these plates for duplo as well?
They do but I have had a hard time finding them!
Duplo will attach to regular Lego plates! :) we have both at our house as our kids are 5 and 3.
I found DUPLO plates from here – http://thewackywarehouse.com/shop/duplo-baseplates/
Im about to make one of these (but a bit bigger) with a DUPLO board, will let you know how it goes
What a brilliant idea, I must have a go at this
Thats really a brilliant Idea :)
Like it,thanks
How did you affix the fence?
I think she said it fit into the grooves of the lunchbox.
Thank you for this terrific gift idea! A friend is having twins soon and this would make a great birthday gift for them later.
SO ADORABLE!!!!!! I never would have thought of that! It would also be great for the classroom!
Cute Idea! VERY clever to put the felt down to cut down on the noise. So smart! Thanks for sharing! Visit http://www.theeducationaltourist.com for tips on traveling with the kids!
Hello,by appartment therapy i m Lucky to read your great idea this portable kit it s sure it is a really good idea and i will do it for my sons!
Thanks a lot
How did you go about attaching the ‘fence’?
I think she said it fit into the grooves of the lunchbox.
She didn’t say. I assume it was tight enough to stay. I am going to try to hot glue it or gorilla glue it in.
This is wonderful. Are you selling any?
Great idea
Love this
clever clever
Cathy
My son is a member of the local chapter of the “Lego”Club. I have got to show this to him! The club members and kids will go crazy over your adorable idea. My son also knows how to get the most out of those Lego cups that you fill yourself. I know he puts the alike pieces together in sticks. I am
Wonderful idea! I drive school bus for special needs children and will be making one of these to keep on my bus. Anything that keeps the kiddos occupied during the ride is a bonus to me. Thank you so much for the very clear directions and photos.
I am making two two lego kits for my grandchildren for Christmas presents.I need to know what size legos fit in the lunchboxes, regular,junior or duplo?
We used regular LEGO, Susie!
thanks!!! I started this project, this being my first timer of Lego. I am a grandmother of 5 beautiful girls.
I have a idea for your blog. Please think about a tutorial for grandparents first experience with Lego. I made two Lego travel kit for my two of my grandchildren ,in a Hello Kitty metal lunchbox. I have learn so much about Lego doing this project.I did do a lot research on the building plate another info.My little -traveler-Lego kits are ready for Christmas!!!
This was such a great idea – because I had it in the house – I used velcro tape to put the lego board down and thought it was kind of a fun idea because if they build something they don’t want to take down – you could always remove the board and cut up another one!
That’s a great idea!
This is great! For ours, we used magnetic strips for the bottom of the board, which was perfect because the board can easily come in and out of the lunch box.
What kind of strips did you use?
Brilliant!
You are amazing!!
My “fence” does not fit securely into the grooves. It just falls out. I will try hot glue.
How did glue work?
Great idea but is it really necessary to nominate genders for the activities..
Who wouldn’t want one of these! Brilliant!
Wonderful. We lived in Asia when our kids were small. This would have been a great idea then. Will show this to other parents. thanks An IDEA: create basic pattern cards for the children to copy, like this mother did at https://mamapapabubba.com/2014/10/09/lego-patterns-busy-box/. A great marriage of ideas.
Oh my gosh I need 5 of these this summer! Lol
Wow what a brilliant idea and easy project. I made one for my toddler. Thanks for sharing the instructions and pictures.
Brilliant. Really like lining the inside of the tin box to cut down on the noise. Leave the LEGO baseplate unglued, and your little ones will love it even more! Now you can include more baseplates!