Hampton Roads LEGO User Group
(established 2002)
No Monthly Meeting in March
(we are recovering from BrickFair Fredericksburg)
Next Meeting: Sunday, 14 April 2024, 1-3pm
Norfolk Botanical Garden, Baker Hall Visitor Center, Holly Room
(be sure to tell the gate guard why you're there when you enter the Garden)
BrickFair Fredericksburg was a resounding success, especially our introduction of Hardlug Hollow in all its bright, shining glory. Thanks to everyone who contributed in this enormous city, airport, and railroad display, and with the utility work which went into making sure it had a functional power grid!
Thanks to everyone (all 5,000 of you!) who came out to see us and our friends from the Hampton Roads Naval Museum at Brick by Brick LEGO Shipbuilding. It was amazing to see 58,000 square feet of the the Virginia Beach Sports Center devoted to LEGO fun.
Also already in 2024, BrickUniverse came to Chesapeake, Virginia! There were numerous play areas for expo attendees to build to their hearts' content, and HaRdLUG showed off some of our own creations alongside our new friends from RVA-LUG and around the Mid-Atlantic region, not to mention the amazing creations from expert builders Rocco Buttliere and Jonathan Lopes.
Here are some other things we've built recently:
280 Gallon Fish Tank
Medieval Village
About us:
HaRdLUG is a group of adults and older teens in the cities of Hampton Roads, Virginia using LEGO to connect with our local community and each other and celebrating that play is something you never outgrow.
We build to challenge ourselves, to relax, or for a creative outlet.
We use LEGO to share stories, to learn, or to teach.
We follow the latest product releases and innovations, and we dive deep into LEGO history.
We make it up as we go, or we follow instructions. We might even write our own instructions.
We value creativity, collaboration, and community.
We share our passion for LEGO by displaying what we build at public events throughout our region, and are always looking for fun new partnerships which match our volunteer members' interests with the goals of organizations hosting community events.
We have monthly meetings where we usually share some of the projects we are personally working on, plan for future events and collaborative displays, and occasionally have a building challenge or activity.
HaRdLUG FishWhere to Find us This Year:
(details and participation subject to change)
National Train Day Celebration
Lee Hall Depot
9 Elmhurst St, Newport News, VA 23603
Saturday, 11 May 2024, 10am-4pm
STEAM Day
Yorktown Naval Weapons Station
160 Main Rd Yorktown, VA 23691
18 May 2024
Butterfly Festival
Norfolk Botanical Garden
6700 Azalea Garden Rd, Norfolk, VA 23518
20 July 2024
Honeybee Festival
Norfolk Botanical Garden
6700 Azalea Garden Rd, Norfolk, VA 23518
17 August 2024
Funky Fungi Mushroom Festival
Norfolk Botanical Garden
6700 Azalea Garden Rd, Norfolk, VA 23518
08 September 2024
What We've Done Lately:
HaRdLUG has been active in southeast Virginia since 2002. If you visit the Norfolk Botanical Garden (NBG), you can see our architectural models in the Baker Hall Visitor Center showing two exciting new structures coming as part of the "Garden of Tomorrow" campaign. In addition to previously having our monthly meetings at NBG , we were also part of their Butterfly and Honeybee Festivals last summer. We displayed at Tidewater Comicon and celebrated the NASA Artemis mission with a LEGO building event at Norfolk's Slover Library. With the Hampton Roads Naval Museum's Brick-by-Brick LEGO Shipbuilding event back live and in person in 2023, we built and brought all of our best boats!
At last year's BrickFair in Chantilly, Virginia, we built a 560-square foot LEGO display (that's 28 big folding tables!) including a collaborative build of a huge medieval village and seaport, two enormous airports, a 280-gallon Lego aquarium, the battleship Arizona, a F4U Corsair, motorized Dragonboat Race, Adventurers scene, WWII battle, 10x-scale Deka Bricks, Pout-Pout Fish, microscale Newport News Shipbuilding, Yellowstone's Grand Prismatic Spring (with real water), and a lot more!
Some of our partners for past events include:
Norfolk Patriotic Festival
Riverside Hospital
Hampton Roads Naval Museum in Norfolk
Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach
Army Transportation Museum in Yorktown
Children's Museum of Virginia in Portsmouth
Mariners Museum, Newport News
Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach
Virginia Living Museum in Newport News
Public Libraries in Chesapeake and Norfolk
Southside Harley Davidson, Virginia Beach
Various Model Train Shows (one is in the works for Lee Hall Depot in Newport News!)
FantaSci in Chesapeake, and other celebrations of geekdom
BrickFair Virginia (Chantilly), Alabama, & Fredericksburg, VA
BrickUniverse Raleigh & Chesapeake
BrickFestLive Hampton
Did you hear? The new LEGO STORE is now open at VIRGINIA BEACH TOWN CENTER!
And a LEGO FACTORY is under construction near Richmond, VA! Their Visitor Center (in the big yellow bricks) is now open at 1400 Meadowville Rd, Chester, VA
Want To Be A Better Builder?
There are a lot of great ways to up your brick-building game. The best one is to just start building. The key to doing anything well is being willing do it poorly, over and over, until you get better. Your first new creations you make might not look like some of the impressive builds you've seen online, but keep on building and you'll learn and get better each time.
Assembling official LEGO sets from instructions, especially the ones with higher age ranges on the box, is one great way to introduce yourself to building techniques and some of the new parts available.
Tips&Bricks is a prolific creator of infographics to share techniques from some of the latest creations by amazing builders throughout the AFOL community.
Former LEGO set designer Tiago Catarino shares instructions and video tutorials for his creations (as well as doing set reviews and such on his YouTube channel).
Jason Allemann makes LEGO move, in all sorts of ways. And he has a website, JK Brickworks, full of instructions and videos. He's also turned a couple of his ideas into official sets through LEGO Ideas.
At Towering Brick Creations, Deepak Shenoy (Deep Shen) has several great articles on building techniques (and the math behind them, if you're into that sort of thing) that he uses in large architectural builds. Also, he does some great mosaics. Check out his Instagram feed, or read the feature on him at The Brothers Brick.
Just want to know more about all things LEGO? Read a LEGO fan media site like bricknerd.com, with hundreds of articles spanning a huge range of subjects.
Tom Alperin wrote a book about LEGO and architecture, but he is probably known equally well in the community for freely sharing ideas (and labels) for LEGO organization.
Come to a HaRdLUG meeting! We love to share ideas. If we aren't an expert in what you want to learn, we might know someone who is!
"Do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are HaRd." - John F. Kennedy