Elbe Spurling was born in 1973 in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts named Norwood, where she grew up in poor area of town known as "the projects". Spurling's favorite toy as a child was LEGO, though she was, by her own estimation, not a building prodigy in her youth. She was raised as a Protestant Christian in the Episcopal Church where her mother was a Sunday School teacher for several years. At age 13, Spurling entered a phase of her life where she consciously tried to prepare for adulthood by weaning herself off of childhood toys and ways of thinking. Taking a critical look at her own beliefs and behaviors, Spurling's newfound skeptical outlook was eventually applied to her religious beliefs, and she soon found herself the only atheist in a family, community, and society full of believers. This caused her to become curious why others kept on believing, and began a lifelong fascination with religion.

Spurling graduated from Norwood Senior High School in 1991 and went on to get a degree in Philosophy & Religion from Boston University, studying under professors including atheist author Michael Martin and ancient Christianity author Paula Fredriksen. While at college, Spurling drew a comic strip called The Second Coming under the pen name "The Reverend" which ran in Boston's third largest daily paper, The Daily Free Press from 1992 to 1995. The experience of reading through the entire Bible for the first time during college had a major effect on Spurling who found it to be nothing like the dry theological treatise she expected. Its vivid drama, lurid stories, and surprising characterizations of God led Spurling to realize that most people don't actually read the Bible, and it prompted her belief that it would be a better thing if people were more familiar with its content.

In 1997, Spurling moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Having developed an irreverent and absurdist writing style in high school and college, Spurling was excited by the creative possibilities of the world wide web. Her first project was a sprawling text-based choose-your-own-adventure very loosely based on Spurling's own family members, called BRAD: the game. The player gets to live out a day in the life of Spurling's weird uncle Brad, and the game features hundreds of different endings as well as a difficult-to-find, impossible-to-beat Hard Mode. The game became a cult hit, especially at many college campuses.

Spurling got back into building with LEGO at the end of the 90s, buying up used lots on eBay and shopping discount stores. After tackling some building challenges like an 8-foot tall skyscraper and a Roman colosseum, Spurling had the idea to try out building some scenes from the Bible in LEGO. As she worked on the Garden of Eden, and designed minifigure versions of Adam, Eve, and God, Spurling began to realize that LEGO could be a compelling storytelling medium. Not knowing where it might lead, she built and photographed six stories from the beginning of the book of Genesis and but them online in October of 2001 on a website she called The Brick Testament. The text accompanying each illustration was a direct quote from the Bible, in keeping with Spurling's goal that people become better acquainted with the Bible's content as it was written. The website was an instant hit with 20,000 site visits in the first week. The positive reception encouraged Spurling to create more illustrations, delving into the New Testament's Gospels as well as continuing through Genesis. By early 2002 the site's illustrations had been featured in the UK's Independent on Sunday and SPIN magazine. As Spurling continued to add illustrated Bible stories to the website, its popularity increased, bolstered by continued media interest including Spurling's LEGO rendition of The Last Supper being featured in Time magazine.

That same year, Spurling worked with Quirk Books to release The Brick Testament: Stories from the Book of Genesis, which was successful enough to prompt follow-up books in 2004 and 2005. The Brick Testament website continued to receive regular updates throughout the first decade of the 2000s, with Spurling illustrating Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 Kings in the Old Testament and the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and Revelation in the New Testament. Spurling says her biggest creative challenge was illustrating the wild visual imagery of Revelation, but that it was also the most rewarding to pull off.

At the start of the 2010s, Spurling began working with Skyhorse Publishing who wanted to publish the entire Brick Testament in a single volume. When this was shown to be unfeasible, the plan instead became to release the Old Testament as one book. The fall 2011 release The Brick Bible: A New Spin on the Old Testament became Skyhorse Publishing's best selling book. It was followed a year later with a New Testament volume that included 200 new illustrations created especially for the book. These two books were combined with a bonus poster for release as a hardcover box set in 2013.

The release of the Old Testament book stirred some controversy. Despite showing strong sales, in November 2011, retailer Sam's Club pulled the book from its shelves after complaints that the book contained material inappropriate for children. Since there was clearly a significant amount of parents interested in LEGO-illustrated Bible storybooks aimed at younger children, Spurling and Skyhorse Publishing decided to launch a new series called The Brick Bible for Kids. With six book releases since 2012, this series has established itself as a popular counterpart to original Brick Bible series which was intended for older children, teens, and adults. There are now more than 300,000 Brick Bible books in print.

Spurling decided in 2013 to explore using her LEGO illustrating and storytelling on some other non-religious topics that have long fascinated her. In fall of that year, she released her first history book, Assassination!: The Brick Chronicle of Attempts on the Lives of Twelve US Presidents. She followed this up with a second book in The Brick Chronicle series called Revolution! which tells the stories of The American Revolution and The French Revolution.

Though illustrating for books takes up the vast majority of Spurling's time spent with LEGO, she has occasionally taken on small LEGO side projects, including the creation of the popular LEGO pain assessment tool and Beauty Tips for Male LEGO Executives (a response to LEGO including beauty tips aimed at 5 to 12 year old girls in their LEGO Friends line of toy sets.

Spurling has announced that her next major LEGO-illustration project will be called The Brick Book of Mormon in which she will present the history and teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She hopes the project will appeal to Mormons and curious non-Mormons alike. After spending 6 months researching for the project and another 6 months writing its complete manuscript, Spurling has now begun building scenes in LEGO and photographing them, and plans to begin putting the illustrated stories online as they are completed.