LEGO Icons’ Dried Flower Centerpiece Is THE Ideal Stunning Build for You and Someone You Love

I was the type of kid who would instantly build any LEGO set I could get my hands on, and I've since grown into the kind of adult who is highly aware that LEGO is an adjective and that saying "LEGOs" is incorrect, but would never point it out to anyone.

While LEGO kits were a staple of my childhood, and I'd commonly get them for birthdays or holiday gifts, I haven't gotten many as an adult, and that's kind of a shame! So when the folks behind the LEGO brand reached out to Sweety High for some potential coverage around Valentine's Day, I jumped at the opportunity—and the moment I saw the LEGO Icons Dried Flower Centerpiece, I knew I needed it in my life. The team was kind enough to send me the stunning set, and here's what you need to know.

The LEGO Icons Dried Flower Centerpiece Kit

Sets in the LEGO Icons collection are designed with extra challenge, as well as reward, in mind, and the LEGO Icons Dried Flower Centerpiece is legitimately one of the most beautiful LEGO creations I've ever seen.

(via LEGO)

The set, which retails for $49.99, consists of a whopping 812 interlocking pieces to create a striking, grown-up floral centerpiece that's 16 inches long, six inches deep and three inches tall, using those hundreds of tiny bricks, studs and more to make something that doesn't even look like it's a LEGO construction from afar. It's also recommended for builders 18 and up due to its complexity, though I think many younger fans will absolutely have the patience and dexterity to put it together.

But the most interesting thing about this set, at least in my opinion, is that it's made with a duo in mind. Unlike many other LEGO sets, it comes with two separate booklets of building instructions, each utilizing different baggies of LEGO pieces, so that the two halves of the piece can be built in parallel by two people before being joined together with the last step. That makes it pretty perfect for the Valentine's Day season, as it makes a great activity for a cozy date night in or close time with your best friend—and unlike things like flowers and candy, it leaves you with a beautiful memento that will stay with you forever.

(via LEGO)

 

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The Experience

I couldn't have been more excited when the box for this LEGO build arrived while I was working on Monday, and I had it on my mind all day until the workday ended and I could dive into the project.

Given the floral and Valentine's themes of the set, I asked my husband if he would want to build it with me, but he had a couple of questions for me first. He knows how much I love a good LEGO project, and wondered if he would be halving my fun by basically cutting my time building in half. After a bit of back and forth, we came to the conclusion that he was absolutely right (I'd rather hog the whole thing to myself!) and did the grown-up version of parallel play, where I gleefully got to crafting my Dried Flower Centerpiece while he drew in his sketchbook, with Twitch on in the background.

So I opened everything up, browsed the booklets to see which one came first, and then got started. The project began, easily enough, with a bag with a big No. 1 on it, so I opened it up dumped everything out, and then started organizing it all into rough categories. I like to do this with every section of every LEGO piece I build, just to get all of the similar pieces together to speed the rest of the process along. I'm not too precious about it (note the misplaced flat 2×4 piece on the right side), but I do find this step really helpful in simplifying each step. Nothing makes building take longer than having to dig around in a pile for every piece!

And the first bit of the build was simple enough. Using some pretty classic shapes, I layered the pieces together to create a base with a semicircle on the end of a rectangle. The only unusual pieces here were four brown pieces with a pivot, which has to be angled just right to align and fit in place, and two organic-looking green leaf shapes hinting at the rest of the floral beauty to come. The kit also came with a brick separator, which I was very thankful for when I realized I'd placed the grey bricks with holes in the wrong place and had to walk everything back to the third step. Flat pieces can be really difficult to remove with just your fingernails, but the brick separator made it effortless.

The pieces in the next bag added a lot more complexity—and I found them much more interesting. Here, I was layering crowns to make wheat stalks, stacking gears to recreate the texture of millet, adding leaves and flower details to branching pipes to create flowers and even attaching little pumpkins to whips to build bladder cherries. Many of these details also had a ball on the end to pop into various sockets, giving them adjustable joints that have to be positioned just right to accommodate all of the detail. These made the build a bit tougher to get just right, but it felt so good to nail it. I also enjoyed the extra detail the manual provided about the origins of certain pieces, and how they were used creatively to build into unusual plant pieces in this set.

And with the addition of the third bag, I really started to see the whole thing come together. This one saw me adding six delicate flower pieces to each tip of spindly stalks and then clustering four of those together for lovely bundles of yellow florals, as well as stacking orange pirate epaulets just right to create the petals of orange cosmos. Of course, the standout of this section of the centerpiece has to be the gorgeous red gerbera flower. By looking at it you'd never guess it's made by plugging a bunch of orange wrenches into oar paddles, and clasping them around a steering wheel capped with a minifigure hat, and that's what makes it so impressive.

 

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And with that section complete, it was time to move on to the second booklet, and bag No. 4. This piece of the puzzle was pretty much identical to what I'd built from the first bag, just mirrored.

I wondered if the next bag would also be a duplicate of bag No. 2, but that didn't wind up being the case at all. While these two parts definitely had their similarities, there were also a couple of differences in the construction, with a white flower bundle replacing a bladder cherry and some leaves moved to different places to create asymmetry, adding to the natural feel.

The sixth bag added even more distinct differences, with the central rose being the star of the show. The intricacy of this shape was probably the trickiest part of the whole build, with tire guard pieces interlocking, one layer over the other, to create the inner petals, and a brand-new shell piece building around the outside for the exterior petals. I had to play with this a few times to get the desired rose shape, but once I got it, I was really pleased with how it turned out.

The pieces in the seventh bag didn't exist to add additional aesthetic detail, but to piece the entire thing together. 20 small pieces built into a device to invisibly lock both halves into one whole, with two more securing them, and together, the whole picture truly is a marvel.

At the end of that process, there were a bunch of pieces left—and more instructions to go—so I looked into those, too. It turns out that if you buy three of the LEGO Icons Dried Flower Centerpiece sets, you can form them all into one big, eye-catching wreath.

(via LEGO)

I don't have three sets, but I wanted to see how it would look, anyhow. I built out the set to join them, and while it was definitely still cute, I definitely preferred the original look overall, and set it back to a singular conjoined piece.

 

Also read about: These Delectable Valentine's Day Sweets Make the Perfect Gift for Someone Special

 

Bottom Line

All in all, the process took me about two and a half hours from start to finish (including the process of snapping photos), and I believe that time was very well spent. It was such a satisfying build, creatively using all kinds of LEGO pieces, and the instructions were always well-illustrated and super clear, so it was easy to bring such a masterpiece to life. The Dried Flower Centerpiece now sits behind my desk so it can be spotted in Zoom calls, and I plan on bringing it out for special occasions, with Valentine's Day and Thanksgiving being prime candidates.

Given the way the instructions are broken up, I can also see how it would be absolutely perfect for building together with someone. Even if the process doesn't wind up being seamless, there's lots of room for you to help and encourage each other along the way, and that process makes the coming together of the two halves extra exciting. LEGO sets also have a reputation for being quite pricey, and I was surprised to learn that this one sells for just $49.99, especially when you take a look at the end results. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves to make things with their hands, whether you want to share that experience with someone you care about, or you'd prefer to keep all the glory to yourself.

 

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