Studio Log: Starweek Twenty-Three

Yet another busy week here at The Burrow. Check it, yo.

• Studio Outing of the Week: HOUSE ON THE ROCK; Ramp It Up.

We took an overnight to Wisconsin with our pal Nelly to visit the famous landmark, House on the Rock. This is an excellent trip to take if you EVER plan on moving, because it'll make you feel WAY better about how much strange and extraneous stuff you keep around. Alex Jordan, the architect and "curator" of the bizarre collection was way crazy and had a penchant for mechanized bands, creepy dolls, carousels, and ENORMOUS sea beasts. The whole rambling, eccentric place is only semi-lit, so photos are hard to take (not that a photo could ever do it justice), but here are a couple we managed to snap:

Nora seated at one of Mr. Jordan's many illuminated wartables, in but one of his many lounges.

Lucy braves the "infinity bridge," an unsupported architectural structure that appears to go on forever while simultaneously being unconnected to the ground. What fun.

There are a lot of ramps at House on the Rock, so while hiking up the four-hundredth ramp of the day, we came up with this new slogan for them:

See more House on the Rock photos on Nora's Flickr!

• Studio Craft Project/Houseguest of the Week:

Paper flowers and Mark! Nora taught Lucy and Mark how to make these fabulous enormous paper flowers to usher in Spring!

• Studio Event of the Week:

Remember our Halloween Photobooth?

We did another one, this time PROM themed!

Thanks to Beck!

Thanks to Ed and Mark!

Thanks to Erika and Maggie!

You can make your own party photobooth! We simply hook up a remote shutter-release to a digital camera inside a painted cardboard box with a hole for the lense, allowing people to take photos of themselves in front of RIDICULOUSLY sparkly fabric. It's really fun, and you get great photos the next day.

See the whole set of photobooth photos on Lucy's Flickr!

• Studio Jam of the Week: Born This Way by Lady Gaga

We were skeptical of this song when we first heard it. Too Madonna-y? It took (a few viewings of) the ridiculously long Matthew Barneyesque-vagina-chin-eyeball-skullmakeup video to convince us of its genius, combined with the poppy dancy-dance beat and Gaga's love of being in her underwear. PLUS, we ALMOST get to see her SMILE in this one!

• Kitty Photo of the Week:

Prom kiss!

Happy Spring, Everybody!

Studio Log: Starweek Twenty-Two

Spring is BUSY! We've been rushing around working on theater shows, conventions, preparing for travel and enjoying the above-freezing Chicago weather. In fact, today we're headed up to Wisconsin to visit House on the Rock!

But we've been sending out lots of Here at Hogwarts orders. Look at this beautiful photo and review we got on NotMartha! (NotMartha Covers our Here at Hogwarts project!)


And we are LOVING some of the notes we're getting in response to the book. Here are a few of our favorite photo replies. Thanks so much to everyone who got the comic. We are MADJAZZED that the response has been so great!

@creativemachine

@Verwho

@Kneecoalie

@Ally_Box

Wanna send us your own photos of you with your beloved H.A.H.? Please do! If you're cool with it, put them all up in this flickr pool, here!

Now EVERYBODY IN THE CAR. 3.5 hours to House on the Rock!
Lucy already has to pee.

Studio Log: Starweek Twenty-One!

Howdy y'all. How ya been? We's been busy. Reeeeal busy.

• Studio Project of the Week!

We finished our comic about studio Kickstarter trip

to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

Buy or download your own copy from The Burrow Store!

(you can also pick up a copy in person at C2E2 on Friday)

Here are all 300 of the copies we mailed out for our lovely kickstarter donors. Phew!

• Kitty VIDEO of the week:

Ripley vs. THE WALL

• Studio News of the Week:

Our bosom pal Nellie got into University of Texas in Austin. She's going to get her MFA in costume technology! Fancy right? What even IS that??? Do you guys have anything fun for her to do in Austin? Restaurants? Parks? Music? Awesome Stuff? Country Music Lesbian Bars? Let us know! She made us this most awesome Texas mix, which is (of course) just the beginning of MANY Texas themed playlists. Here is our favorite song from the mix:

• Studio Jam of the Week: These Old Bones, by Miss Dolly Parton

Thanks fer readin' fellers.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Studio Log: Starweek Twenty!

Happy twentieth post!

Many more pop-culture art fun times to be had ahead!

• Studio project of the week:

Nora screen-printed 300 covers for our Hogwarts comic! Tomorrow we'll start trimming them down and stapling them up to send it to YOU!

Hufflepuff, Slytherin, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw!

SO MANY PRINTS!

We also did a little impromptu Ustream feed yesterday. Nora and Lucy answered questions about The Burrow while Lucy (sort of) worked on the 57 custom sketches for the superstar Kickstarter donors. We'll probably do more live streams, because it was supa fun. Would you guys be interested in watching? We could post the broadcast date/time here on the blog earlier than one-day-ahead-of-the-show next time...

• Studio Party of the Week:

It's very fortunate that we live together, because NO-ONE TAKES THE OSCARS AS SERIOUSLY AS THE BURROW. Not even the absence of a television set in the apartment could keep us from our glorious wintertime cinematic revelry... (we might have bought a TV for the sake of the Oscars...) (...today*). We were going to post pictures of ourselves in our Oscarwear (which we wore on our reddish carpet... alone... in our apartment), but our finery was eclipsed by this little number, courtesy of The Gregory Brothers. Big luv:

*Lucy had gotten a TV for her Christmas/Xmas present from her folks, but it was on back-order for, like, EVER. So then we found the same TV at a local place and cancelled the online order to get it locally. Today.

TINY. BALL. OF LIGHT.

Not to be confused with our...

• Studio Jam of the Week: (THIS ONE!!! IS FOR ALL THE LADIES!!!)

Jay Sean - Do You Remember ft. Sean Paul, Lil Jon

(You may recognize this little number from a moviefilm we like to call "Wednesday Afternoon at the Burrow." AKA "The Karate Kid." Starring Jayden Smith. We especially like the parts of the song where Lil Jon screams in a scary serial killer voice. All, "DO YOU REMEMBER!!!?")
Well? Do you?

• Studio Munch of the Week:

We're doing a big fancy farmer's market dinner every thursday night. This one was roasted sausages with sweet-potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and dates with a side-salad of spinach, tomatoes and goat cheese. Rock on, Logan Square Farmer's Market.

• Cat Photo of the Week

It's cooooolllld.

Studio Log: Starweek Nineteen

Having finally gotten our suitcases unpacked... Today... Two weeks since we returned... The Burrow Studio life commences. On with the frivolities!

• Studio Project of the Week:

Look at this in-progress printing preview for the comic about our trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! Nora is screenprinting the (house-colored) covers, and once those are done we'll mail off the orders and put them up for sale. Shown here: Gryffindor editions.

Speaking of HP...

• Studio Improvement of the Week:

We've conveniently wall-mounted our wands near our desks, for quick access when dark wizards attack our studio.

STILL speaking of our Orlando trip...

• Friends-of-Burrow Art of the Week!

This is by the amazing Rachel Dukes of Poseur Ink. What a sweetie! This is PHOTO-DOCUMENTATION of the event depicted. We've ordered away for personalized wetsuits and prescription goggles for all the snorkeling we plan to do in Chicago.

• Studio Outing of the Week:

In honor of Valentine's Day, we bought ourselves a pile of cupcakes (from Bleeding Heart Bakery) and took them as our dates to see a WEDNESDAY NOON SHOWING of the critically acclaimed, social-justice documentary: JUSTIN BIEBER; NEVER SAY NEVER.

We went into it with expectations of mildly single-bitter amusing cupcake tongue-in-cheek hilarity, but found ourselves experiencing a range of emotion heretofore never experienced by any human being on earth (except for 5 million 13-year-old girls). We laughed, we cried, we cheered, we danced, and we screamed high-pitched shrills of fervent delight. Thank god the theater was COMPLETELY EMPTY EXCEPT FOR US.

Turns out that kid is kind-of a savant. Too bad he might be dumb as a post. Don't worry, Justin, we still love you, you adorable 16-year-old rich-white-male-privileged-Canadian cutie-pie.

In honor of this year's St. Beiber's Day (we changed it), here is our...

• Studio Jam of the Week:

Goal for next week: Learn. This. Dance. (but we will never be as good as the high-school girls who will probably win the JBeibz dance contest. Curse them!)

Have you ever fallen to the whims of the mighty roar of fan culture populated by preteen ladies? TELL US YOUR STORIES SO WE FEEL LESS ALONE.

Moving along...

• Kitty Photos of the Week:

Spiral Ripley.

Oh, were you folding this laundry? That's too bad, because now it's my bed.

Please don't hate us just because we are full of BiebLove. And cupcakes. We might have been coming down with a fever...... You know what we're gonna say now.

See you Beibians next week.

Studio Log: Starweek Eighteen

STUDIO OUTING OF THE CENTURY!


We just returned from a week in Orlando Florida, checking out The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It was quite an experience, and you can read all about it in detail in the comic that Lucy is drawing all about the trip (which will be available for purchase as soon as it's complete). Those of you who donated to our kickstarter for our Horribly Heartbroken at Hogwarts project, you'll be receiving your copies of the comic within the next few weeks.

Thanks so much for your support! It was amazing.

TONS more photos on:

Nora's Flickr

and Lucy's Flickr

Studio Sub-Outing of the Century!
Manatee Swim! We had a couple extra days to digest all the Harry Potter candy we were eating for all our meals, so we drove up to a manatee refuge on the Crystal River, where we got to swim with manatees.


Those are Nora's feet... NEXT TO THAT MANATEE.

• Studio T-Shirt of the Week:

You can now buy our Star Wahhhrz Krew T-Shirt! Check it out on our...

Burrow Studio Store!

• Studio Jam of the Week:

Glee is back, yo. Therefore, so is Darren Criss. (But more focus on Kurt, please. Nobody puts baby in a corner!)

Here's a picture of us time traveling into Atlantis.

See you next week, Atlantians.

Studio Log: Starweek Seventeen (T-Minus 24 Hours)

We decided to forego the usual Sunday update in favor of doing a Wednesday one, as our DEPARTURE IS IMMINENT.

It's 24 hours until we leave for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The preparations were mighty, but we're all ready to set out on our voyage! See below:

(Alright, so in all actuality we haven't packed at all. There's still 24 hours to pack!)

If you live in or around Orlando and wanna hang out while we're in town, we'll be arranging at least one meetup during the week. Wanna be pals with us and participate in this adventure? More info about the hangouts here:

Orlando Meetup

The movie stars rest up in costume after a long day of shooting.