Elbe Spurling

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 from the Old Testament, as well as 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 the Book of Revelation, but notes that it was also the most rewarding to accomplish.

At the start of the 2010s, Spurling began working with Skyhorse Publishing to publish the entire Brick Testament in a single volume. When this was shown to be unfeasible, the plan was altered to release just the Old Testament as a one-volume book. The fall 2011 saw the 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 hit books were then 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 strong sales, retailer Sam’s Club pulled the book from its shelves in November 2011, after receiving complaints that the book contained material inappropriate for children. Seeing that there was a significant amount of of interest from parents in a LEGO-illustrated Bible storybooks aimed at younger children, Spurling and Skyhorse Publishing decided to launch a companion series called The Brick Bible for Kids, which has had eleven book releases since 2012, establishing 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.

In 2013, Spurling decided to expand her LEGO illustrating and storytelling repetoire to inculde 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.

Most recently, Spurling has begun work on her latest major LEGO-illustration project, The Brick Book of Mormon, in which she presents the history and teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Similar to her approach to The Brick Bible, Spurling hopes that presenting the material in a straightforward manner using only quotes from scriptures and teaching materials available on  the church’s official website, the project will appeal to believers and non-believers alike. After spending 6 months researching for the project and another 6 months writing its complete manuscript, now Spurling has begun building scenes in LEGO and photographing them, and is sharing the stories online as they are completed.