Welcome to the latest issue of the Playwell Bricks' newsletter! In this issue, we are sharing our CEO Jason's hard-won brick wisdom, showcasing a custom Pokemon model, and taking the first steps of the Playwell Journey, a series in which we follow Jason's journey from stay-at-home-Dad to the CEO of an internationally respected design company with clients like Google, MIT, and Porsche.

Jason was THRILLED when he was hired to design his dream project, Brookside Manor, but… then it was finished. What the heck was he supposed to do now? Why was he feeling EMPTY when he should have been dancing in the streets?

UGH. Why are brains like this?

Don’t worry, now that he’s been through it, he’s happy to put on his dream guru hat and share what he’s learned with the rest of us. Namely, “understand that you do need to find the next thing.”

If you'd like to read more about the project that Jason says "killed the artist in me" and how he overcame his sense of ennui, smash that button to read the full article.

Playwell Bricks CEO Jason’s education over the past year is that companies don’t want custom sets that are super complicated. Of course, this is the OPPOSITE of everything he had to do to build his name and his reputation up to this point.

😩 

The painful truth? “I think you have to get past your own ego, have that demolished, and then you can produce something that people want.”

But the thrill of creating something intricate that looks simple from the outside? “That just checks all the boxes for me,” he says with a grin.

Read more of this story via the big black button below.

Gotta catch ‘em all!

Everyone’s got their favorite Pokemon and for this client, that was none other than Cubone. Sure, we’re a little concerned. I mean, Cubone looks pretty cute but they do wear the skull of their mother.

Bit dark, amirite?

Fortunately for our design team, THIS Cubone’s wearing a skull made of bricks. No PokeMOMS were harmed in the making of this custom set, we promise.

Ahem. You can learn about how we brought this Pokemon to life at the Pokedex we call our website, available at the button below.

This last week we kicked off a six-part Soap Opera... wait, that's not right. Soap Opera? Oh, rights! Bricks. I meant to say BRICK OPERA that we've dubbed The Playwell Journey. In this EPIC SAGA you'll discover that that before our CEO Jason rediscovered his love for bricks, his passion was woodworking.

In fact, he was working on a life size Hobbit hole when what he calls “a stupid mistake” almost cost him a finger.

When his fellow woodworkers nodded their heads and mentioned that the first accident was often the most jarring, he was astounded. The FIRST?? 😬 Jason decided then and there that he wasn’t going to wait around for a second accident.

With this creative outlet gone, what ever would he find to fill this void in his life? FIND OUT in Part One.

In the second episode, AKA The Playwell Journey: Part Two, we find Jason hunting down secondhand LEGO® sets to build up his collection. He soon discovered that most of these sets were just put together and left to get dusty on shelves. No one was PLAYING with them.

This bugged Jason, and it kept on bugging him. Someone was stifling kids’ creativity. But what could he do about it?

I mean, he couldn’t possibly start a creativity workshop for kids in his own studio, could he? Hahaha.

Well, it turns out he could possibly, thank you very much.

He even had a little girl come to his workshop that told him she had zero creativity. He encouraged her as gently as he could until finally she burst through the door, excited to share her… you know what? You should probably read that story in Jason’s own words. Don’t worry, it’s all here, in Part Two of the Playwell Journey:

Stay tuned for Parts Three through Six in our next newsletter where we'll follow Jason as he discovers that he's a terrible tyrant, gets his first commission, and dreams up a business called Playwell Bricks.