Craftiness

A Comparison of the LEGO® Flower Bouquet, Tulips, and Roses

Kyra

Sep 22, 2021 •12 minutes to read

When LEGO® came out with their new botanical collection I knew I eventually needed to build them. I absolutely adored the organic feel with the lines and, once I had the opportunity, I purchased the LEGO® Flower Bouquet set. I absolutely loved the fun of the build and wondered how I could customize this in the future. I later saw online that there existed two other small LEGO® sets one with three tulips and the other with two roses. I was curious how they’d work with the larger bouquet but most of the online reviews only talked about one or the other set and not all three sets together. The only site that did mention them was a LEGO Roses & Tulips Review on theBrickBlogger.com but it was more a review for the smaller kits so only mentioned how the colors between the bouquet and smaller flowers might not go together but didn’t go much beyond that. Based on the side by side vase photos; however, I could tell that the cheaper kits had shorter stemmed flowers compared to the more expensive bouquet flowers. After much deliberation I purchased both the tulip and rose LEGO® sets and now, since they’re both built, I wanted to share a better comparison between the three kits and how, I may, customize them in the future in case you’re also debating whether you should purchase and/or extend your LEGO® flower set(s).

Pinterest-geared image showing five images (all shown below too), the blog title in the center, and my main URL to learn more at the bottom.

First a quick aside. I have no affiliation with the LEGO® brand and make no money if you choose to purchase these products. I love building and playing with LEGO® and saw that no one yet had seemed to make a direct comparison between these three kits and I wanted to share it with you in case you were curious about them too. This post will go over the following LEGO® sets: Flower Bouquet (10280), Tulips (40461), and Roses (40460).

And a quick warning. There may be the odd spoiler given away so be aware in case you want to be surprised building these sets in the future.

The Flower Bouquet

About a month ago I bought the LEGO® Flower Bouquet set that I had been drooling after for quite awhile. I wanted to have fun building them while also having flowers on the table that wouldn’t drop random petals or need their smelly water changed. The kit didn’t let me down! Although, when moving or bumping the bouquet, the odd petal or leaf does still drop off but Matt doesn’t seem to mind as much compared to when a real bouquet would drop it’s petals by our food.

I had a blast following along with each flower build and seeing how the instructions took random pieces to make a gorgeous stem and bloom(s). I also loved seeing pieces I recognized from previous sets like, for instance, a light and dark green hued dinosaur wing that I’d previously seen when the kids absolutely adored dinosaurs and we bought them Jurassic Park sets that is now being used as a simple rose leaf. Additionally I adored the odd little factoid sprinkled throughout the instruction book explaining why a particular piece was used or where that piece, in a different color, was first created and used with. Although this bouquet cost me $49.99 USD I figured it would pay off over time as I now have a bouquet I was able to build, that I could move anywhere throughout the house, that lasts forever, and, if I get tired of it, I could take apart and save to build in part or fully later when it feels new to me again.

As I finished building each flower I put them into my wide mouthed glass vase that I normally use for real flowers. As the LEGO® flowers are similarly sized to a real flower the height worked perfectly. The main stem piece used in the bouquet is 10 inches (25.3 centimeters) long so the final height of each flower is usually longer those ten inches depending on how tall the bloom itself is and whether there are additional pieces used to extend the length of the stem. Once I finished all the flowers I didn’t like how the final bouquet looked as the vase was too wide for it and the flowers jostled around when I moved it. I looked again in my cupboard and found an old cleaned out juice bottle that had just enough room to allow me to design a new bouquet layout using it as a vase. This way each bloom stayed in place when I moved the bouquet from table to counter and back again. It was; however, a bit tight so the odd stem piece did bend slightly in the weeks before I moved the bouquet back into the larger vase again.

Image shows an overhead photo of the bouquet spread out in a large vase over a black floor mat. Two girls are seen to the left and right both touching a particular favorite flower. — Once I made all the flowers I moved the vase temporarily to the floor so the girls could better see each bloom and easily touch them all. They loved seeing each flower as it was built but now they could better interact and see the final bouquet as a whole.

Image is a closer photo of the final bouquet being held up against the white wall. — I didn’t like how loose the stems were in the vase so I found a clean glass bottle and moved the flowers over. They just fit so it was a bit tight but the overall final bouquet was awesome.

Same close photo of the bouquet against the wall as the previous one but this time it's turned at a different angle to see more of the pink and purples. — I loved the structure of the roses but didn’t like their color. Other than them all the other flowers were perfect and looked great on their own or as a whole.

Going into the build I thought the lavender would be my absolute favorite of all the flowers and was both happy (that it was near the end of the instruction book) and sad (that I only had one). It turned out, by the end, that the lavender was my least favorite of all the flowers and greenery as it much more breakable when being built and when the bouquet was moved or bumped. The lavender was also the tallest of the stems so there was a much higher chance of bumping it specifically especially when the bouquet was placed under my cupboard door. All in all though all the flowers were amazing and, other than the beige roses, the colors they used were on point.

Just for fun I went back onto the LEGO® website and looked for flowers to see if there were any other similar ones. I came across a set of three tulips and a set of two roses which I immediately fell in love with . I saw they were age rated for eight year old kids and up, in contrast with the 18 year old age for the bouquet, and wondered how they would look compared to the rest of my stems if I added them to my vase.

This screenshot of the Tulips (40461) and Roses (40460) kits were taken from a search for flowers on the LEGO.com website on September 15th, 2021.

Looking online I only came across theBrickBlogger’s LEGO Roses & Tulips Review that mentioned all three sets at once and saw from the side by side bouquet photos they included that these flowers appeared shorter than the main bouquet ones. The site didn’t include photos of them in one vase together so I wondered how they would look together. About a month later I finally broke down and bought both the roses and tulips so I could find out myself.

The Roses

Image shows a screenshot of the rose page on LEGO.com with the small photos listed on the side, information about the product along the bottom and right side, and a main photo of two roses in the center. — The LEGO® Roses (40460) are currently available online, are rated for 8 year old kids and up, consists of 120 pieces, and costs $12.99 USD. This screenshot from the LEGO.com website was taken on September 15th, 2021.

Image shows two red roses on a straight and slightly curved stem laid on it's side overlapping with the instruction book. The far left bloom is opened while the right one is closed up. — The final two built roses from this LEGO® Roses 40460 kit.

The LEGO® Roses kit consists of two red blooms on the same constructed green stem from the roses in the bouquet but are much shorter as they consist of less pieces. The rose bloom itself is constructed slightly differently than the previous rose as the outer petals use the same pieces as the inner petals making the outer section shorter than the beige rose outer petals as shown below. I think I prefer the first way and thus, if buying loose pieces, will copy the instructions for the bouquet’s rose petals rather than this smaller kit’s instructions. In contrast to the first ones I prefer the smaller kit’s light green leaves folding down from the red roses and, I think, I prefer the lower leaves on the stem rather than the dinosaur wing leaves of the beige roses too. That said both roses have their own pros and cons and I’d be interested in combining different elements to make my own in my preferred colors later. Plus as the stems match and the rose construction is similar both types of roses can be easily mixed and matched in a vase especially if the stem pieces are shared to make them either the same length or more staggered in length so there’s a less abrupt height difference between them.

Image shows all five roses laid out on the table. Two of the beige and one red rose is closed while one of each color is fully open to better contrast the two types. — Both sets of roses can be closed or fully opened although the bouquet roses have a larger outer set of petals to better envelope the inner ring of petals when closed.

From the side or top, in the images below, you can better see the difference in the length of the stem, the outer rose petal pieces, the light green leaves curling from the bloom, and the lower leaves themselves.

Image shows the two roses side by side taken from above so you can see a better comparison of the side of the bloom and the stem as a whole. The other flowers are laid out in the back.

The flowers haven't been moved from the previous photo but the photo itself is taken from the front to better show the blooms and the trailing stems that go to the back of the photo.

All in all I love both sets of roses and could see having the five of them in a single vase especially if I move the stem pieces around so they’re more staggered in height rather than only being two different heights in a vase. Additionally, I could see buying more pieces, maybe in newer colors for the blooms, to make a fuller rose bouquet on the table.

The Tulips

Image shows a screenshot of the tulip page on LEGO.com with the small photos listed on the side, information about the product along the bottom and right side, and a main photo of three tulips in white, lavender, and yellow in the center. — The LEGO® Tulips (40461) are currently available online, are rated for 8 year old kids and up, consists of 111 pieces, and costs $9.99 USD. This screenshot from the LEGO.com website was taken on September 15th, 2021.

I absolutely adore the Tulips (40461) kit and am so glad I bought it. The colors remind me of Spring and Easter which I mentioned to Matt as I opened up the two bags inside. It’s actually funny because I was exhausted and he scoffed at the weird way I said it and then, midway through the build, he mentioned they looked like Easter and then was surprised when I looked at him strangely and burst out laughing. It was hilarious in my tired mind.

Image shows the three final tulips laid out on the table and tilted so the stems overlap under the leaves. The instruction book is below the white tulip with the lavender and then yellow tulip below. — The final three tulips from this LEGO® Tulips 40461 kit.

When I took photos for this post I forgot that the orange bloom in the full bouquet was a poppy rather than a tulip so I snapped some photos of all four flowers together for a comparison. That said although they are built completely different from each other they do look the most similar compared to the other blooms so I figured I’d include these photos for a better comparison between the two sets. The flower bouquet’s orange poppy has an off green ten inch long stem in one piece with the other darker green stem pieces added to both the top and bottom. It also has no leaves and the flower portion itself has more pieces, is more complicated to build, and the petals can bend open and closed. I adore this orange bloom and wish the full bouquet came with more of them. The three tulips in the smaller kit, in contrast, are more structurally sound as there’s no moving pieces and more connections points. This means they are less likely to break if moving your bouquet around. Their light green stem is constructed from smaller pieces and has two petals coming out from a single point in each stem.

Image shows the original orange tulip on the left and the three new tulips on the right. The top of all are facing the camera with the stems extending out the back and meeting behind the three tulips.

Image is taken from above looking down at the four tulips. The orange bloom is even-ish with the other three but it's stem extends past where the other ones end.

If combining these two types of flowers together in a single small vase I would first play around by swapping the stems between the two kits so the larger orange bloom has a wider but potentially shorter stem while the smaller tulip buds are more staggered by using the single long stem and pieces of their own original stems. That said I haven’t tried this yet as I want the orange bloom to be taller to help support the flower head in the bouquet. As it stands now, as the new tulip buds are so short, I need to have them leaned up with their leaves propped on the vase edge so they don’t fall into my vase. I’d love, in the future, for these tulips to have a longer stem so they could be supported better and maybe have a staggered set of heights making them more pleasing to the eye. Either way I’d need to buy more LEGO® stem parts to make that happen.

Additionally the rose kit came with one extra thorn piece, in case it gets lost, so after this photo I added the thorn to the bend in the orange poppy’s stem. Doesn’t make sense from a scientific botanical stance but I figured why not…. it’s LEGO® and it brought me a smile.

The Full Bouquet With All Three Kits

With the two red roses and the three tulips built it was time to move my full bouquet back to the wider mouthed glass vase and organize them all together. I had considered taking time moving the stems around to make them all similar yet staggered heights but decided since so many have the ten inch long stem it would be simpler to leave them as they are for now. That said, as I hated the lavender being bumped so much, I removed the extension pieces at the bottom of it’s stem so it was only ten inches long rather than the longer height created from the instructions. I then took these pieces to make one of the red roses taller and, with the last piece not working as I was short a connection piece, added the final stem piece to the end of one of the greenery stems. With that simple customization done I started adding my taller original bouquet pieces to the glass vase first and saved the shorter newer flowers for last so I could prop them up between the flowers and, for the tulips, against the side of the vase so their leaves keep them from falling in. I do have a bit of space left in the vase opening so I have to be a bit more careful when moving the bouquet around but that also means I have some space to purchase additional loose LEGO® parts to add more of my favorite blooms in the same color or in something new.

Here are three photos showing different vantage points of the same final bouquet using these three LEGO® sets (Flower Bouquet (10280), Tulips (40461), and Roses (40460)) arranged into a glass vase I already owned with no additional pieces added.

Image is taken from above looking down at the full bouquet set on a wooden floor.

Image is taken looking at the clear vase containing all the blooms from all three kits. You can see my hand holding the vase and the stems inside the clear vase along with all the blooms together.

Same as the image above but the vase is rotated to show the back view of the previous photo.

All in all I’m so glad I bought all three kits. That said I keep wondering how I could customize them and I can see maybe buying additional pieces both in the same colors as well as in new shades to expand my flowers. Depending what’s available I could make a bouquet that’s all one type of flower in many colors or several types of flowers in one specific hue with the odd bit greenery mixed in to change it up. In these cases I would need to any extra blooms when not in use and whenever I want to change up my bouquet I could simply take the current bouquet apart and build a new one fresh.

I hope this post helps you out whether you’re debating buying one, or more, of the flower LEGO® sets or just looking around. I absolutely love them and can see, in the future, customizing them so I have a diverse range of flowers or colors to create a bouquet on the fly based on how I’m feeling.

Have you tried these LEGO® sets out before? If so how did you like it? And, more importantly, have you customized it yet and how? If so I’d love to hear how you customized them so feel free to share in the comments below. I hope your week is going amazingly.

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