The Den of Slack

Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way has been on my shelf for about two decades, but I never read the whole book until recently. It’s sort of a twelve-step program for people who are creatively blocked. I was feeling that way after finishing a big writing project at the end of 2025 and decided to read the book as a New Year’s resolution.

One of the things Julia Cameron swears by is setting time aside each week to do something fun and creative by yourself — she calls it an artist’s date. The first one I did was a trip to a local indie bookstore where I splurged on a stack of new books, followed by lunch nearby. On my way to the restaurant I wandered into a toy store that had a big LEGO display. I didn’t buy anything, but it got me thinking that building a LEGO set could be another good artist’s date.

I was drooling over the Neuschwanstein Castle, but I’m already short on space to display finished dollhouses, let alone a huge LEGO castle. So I started looking at LEGO Art, which hangs on the wall, and decided to try The Great Wave. I finished it in an afternoon, and it was fun!

So much fun, in fact, that I wanted to do another one. So I bought The Starry Night.

I mean, c’mon. How cute is this?!

(LEGO figures don’t have ears. Yes, of course, it’s the first thing I checked when I took Vincent out of the box.)

This one’s more complicated than The Great Wave, and took me a few weeks. Here’s the finished piece, sans frame.

When I was looking online for posts about other people’s experiences building this set, I came across a YouTube video where someone showed how he extended the frame to include a mat, more like The Great Wave.

Here’s a screen grab from the video:

Honestly, before I found this video I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the frame, but once I saw it, I needed to do it. Regular readers of my blog know that I like to “kitbash” miniatures. Apparently this urge extends to LEGOs.

The video doesn’t provide a parts list or instructions for modifying the frame, in spite of many requests in the comments. With a bit of googling I found a Facebook post where someone posted a similarly modified frame that I assume they derived from the video.

I spent a lot of time looking at the video and the Facebook picture to figure out which additional parts I would need. The extra parts cost about $50 from the LEGO Pick a Brick store.

Coincidentally, I spent one of my other artist’s dates doing a Starry Night paint by number. Can’t say I was a fan of that — the colors that came with the kit don’t match the painting that well, and I’m also just not very good at painting — but I did have fun picking out a gaudy frame for it at Michaels. I’m planning to hang these up together in my office.

Since I’d seen several comments from people asking for instructions for the modified frame, I figured I might as well write up how I did it. If your Google search for how to upgrade the frame for the LEGO Starry Night set has brought you here, I hope this post is helpful. If you just want the parts list, jump to the bottom.

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