Welcome back to our BrickNerd Quick Build series! A quick build is a small LEGO creation that you can build with your spare LEGO parts, customize however you want, and experiment with a few new techniques.

For today’s build, I’m going to start with a story. Recently, I built this little character which was meant just as an inspiration for something else fun that we have in the works here at BrickNerd. The first version was not a ballerina, but from the posture, I couldn’t help but see a little ballet dancer in it—so I made a few adjustments and voilà—I had a ballerina.

To complete the build, I remembered the cute ballerina music boxes that open to reveal a dancer and make them spin, so I decided to make one. I wanted the box to be small so I gave up on the idea of a box that could be opened and closed and instead focused on a simple turning mechanism.

Instructions to Build a Ballerina Music Box… Without the Music

For the instructions, we first start with the "box" with four 2x2 corner plates which can be replaced with one 4x4 plate with open center if you prefer.

The ballerina itself is only nine parts, the most interesting ones being the skirt and the legs. I've used the minifig crown in white and the blade/ spear tip in brick yellow, but you can swap the colors for whatever you want.

There are probably different and better ways to build the gears section, but I don't own any Technic sets and my gears collection is pretty small. (I had to search and destroy a few builds in order to find the right pieces… score one for creative destruction!)

Spotlight on Spinning

Here’s a little video on how the box works to make the ballerina spin. You can see that you can either rotate an axel “key” or the wind up toy part—your performance may vary based on clutch power.

I hope this inspires you to do a few spins of your own through your LEGO collection. To help you get started, you can download the parts list for the Ballerina Music Box here. Enjoy!

Let us know below in the comments what type of builds would you like to see more in our Quick Builds series!

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