Photonic crystals are materials that allow us to manipulate light in new and unexpected ways. Semiconducting materials played a tremendous role in microelectronics and we expect photonic crystals to revolutionize the world of microphotonics in a similar way. Colloidal self-assembly and multi-beam interference lithography are great tools to build crystals with interesting optical properties. I will review some recent progress towards constructing photonic band-gap materials and switchable 3D Bragg gratings.