DIY LEGO Minifigure Display

I live in a LEGO-heavy house. My husband has always been a huge LEGO fan and as the boys get older, they become more and more obsessed. I’ve even gotten in on the fun more than a time or two. Needless to say, we have quite the LEGO collection. The boys are all particularly into LEGO minifigures. So much so that they’ve really started to take over our house! So I decided to put together a simple DIY LEGO minifigure display to help them keep their favorites organized.

This was such a simple project, and it actually turned out so well that Corey has asked me to build a few for him. I think that automatically means it’s a big winner, right?!

This is a super simple project. And, if you have LEGO-loving kids (or spouses, apparently), I can guarantee it’ll be a hit. Let’s get to the tutorial!

How to Make a DIY LEGO Minifigure Display

Note: There are really two ways to approach this. I did some trial and error here, so you don’t have to! If you want to be able to swap the LEGOs out regularly, then you’ll be putting the bricks directly on the plexiglass. This looks really nice and polished, and will allow you to have a fun background if you want (more on that in a second). However, if you want it to be display only, I recommend putting the LEGO bricks on the picture board and setting the frame up more like a shadowbox.

I set mine up so the kids can swap out the LEGO minifigs whenever they want. So, that’s how these instructions are laid out. But, I’ll note where you’ll do something differently if you’d rather do it as a shadowbox!

Step One: Disassemble Frame + Cut Mat

First up, take a second to remove the backing, mat, and plexiglass from the frame. Grab one of them (doesn’t matter which!) and trace it on the picture board. This will be your background if you’re gluing the LEGO bricks on the plexiglass, and it’ll be the backing for your display if you’re setting it up as a shadowbox!

Of course, if you don’t want a plain white background, you can do this one just about anything. If you’re gluing the bricks to the plexiglass like I did, you could even print out a fun themed background! The sky’s the limit here.

Step Two: Determine Brick Placement

Now, you need to figure out how many minifigs can fit on your frame and the spacing. There is no right or wrong answer here – I just played around with the spacing until I found something I liked. I started by dividing my board into a grid (drawing the lines lightly with a pencil) and then centered the bricks horizontally on the bottom line of each square of the grid.

Here’s the process I did to determine the spacing:

• Measure the width and height of the board you’ll be gluing the bricks on.
• Play around with dividing that by various spacing until you find a whole number (or close to it). For example, I found that for my 10″ wide board, 2.5″ spacing worked great. Generally, around 2.5″ was my go-to for horizontal spacing, and about 2.75″ for vertical. It wasn’t always perfect, but close is fine!
• Draw your grid lines using the spacing you like.
• Center a 2×4 LEGO brick on the bottom line of a square and mark the corner where the brick will go. Repeat for each square.

Step Three: Glue LEGO Bricks

Now, it’s time to glue your bricks on! We couldn’t find enough LEGO bricks in a single color for any of our displays, so we got creative with it. I think it looks great even without them matching perfectly, but of course, you can do it however you’d like. You can create a pattern of colors, do one color for each type of minifig – get creative with it!

If you’re gluing directly onto the picture board, then you can just glue the bricks where you’ve made your marks. If you plan to glue on the plexiglass, simply set it on top of the board where you’ve made your marks, hold it in place, and glue the bricks on.

Take your time with this part of the process, and be sure to hold the LEGO bricks in place for a few seconds so they stay still. I found that sometimes they would migrate a bit and I had to adjust, but after about 30 second or so, they stayed steady.

Step Four: Let It Dry, Then Place Minifigures!

Once the glue has had some time to dry (for the glue I used, about 30 minutes was plenty), it’s time to display those minifigs!

The boys had spent hours already gathering aaaaall of the guys they wanted to have on their LEGO minifigure display. They played around with grouping them by theme, and it was so fun to watch them have a blast with it. All you need to do to display a minifig is pop them on the front center bumps on the LEGO brick. They’re super easy to swap out and rearrange, and it looks so great.

Again – if you want to set your frame up like a shadowbox, you’ll want to have the bricks on a picture board, then you’ll put the plexiglass for the frame in-between the spacer and the frame itself. It might sound confusing in writing but I promise once you see the frame, you’ll understand. We didn’t set any of them up like this because the boys want to play with them, but I have a feeling I’ll be making more for Corey soon!

Step Five: Display Those Minifigures!

You can leave these sitting out on a shelf or on top of a dresser, or you can hang them up on a wall! Grant has his displayed in his bookcases for now. He can’t reach them if we hang them on the wall! But, Jackson has his hung up on the wall and they look so great too.

This was such a fun little project to do with the boys. I’m really pleasantly surprised at how much I love it. Corey told me he’s been looking to buy a LEGO minifigure display for a while now, but he likes mine more than anything he’s seen online. So, I think it’s safe to say this project was a huge hit for my family!