Meet the Crafter Behind the ‘I Made It! Market’

Carrie Nardini started “I Made It! Market” to give local crafters more business opportunities. Now the market caters to hundreds of local artists.

Carrie Nardini and Nina Barbuto were at a craft fair at Carnegie Mellon University in 2007 when they began talking about opportunity—or the lack thereof. Both young women are crafters, but at the time there weren’t many places for local people to sell handmade items. The women were on the verge of creating “I Made It! Market,” an organization that now includes hundreds of local crafters, artists and makers. “It was really the resurgence of people selling and wanting handmade things, but there sort of wasn’t anywhere for those makers to go,” Nardini said. “We thought, ‘let’s just make this happen, and make this happen all the time.’” Nardini, 35, of Brookline, is now the director of I Made It! Market, which strives to provide local artists …

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Fill Your Easter Basket with Two Eggs-ceptional Snacks

Two delicious creations to add to your Easter basket this yea—cake pops and cheese ball carrots.

Make room in your Easter basket this year for two unique snacks—one that takes a simple cake mix to the next level and another that a gives a whole new use to disposable icing bags.  Cake Pops Ingredients 1 box cake mix (any flavor) 1 container frosting (one that tastes well with the cake mix you choose) Melting chocolate Lollipop sticks Sprinkles or other cake decorations Styrofoam block   Steps   Cheese Ball Carrots Ingredients 1 disposable icing bag Cheese balls Twist tie Green paper ribbon   Steps Variation: If your little one is too small to eat cheese balls, use sweet potato puffed cereal instead for the same “carrot” look.

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Celebrate Valentine's Day With Crafting

Three items and three simple steps create this cute Valentine’s Day conversation hearts votive.

Using only a bag of conversation hearts, a glass votive and hot glue, parents and their children (or anyone for that matter) can create a simple but cute craft project for Valentine’s Day.  This candy-decorated votive can be made for grandparents, teachers, babysitters or that special someone. Materials: 1 bag of conversation hearts 1 glass votive Hot glue gun and glue sticks Steps: If your loved one isn’t a fan of candles, you can always replace the votive with a plain candy dish or a glass vase and decorate the outside the same way.

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Colleen Pelc

11:08 am on Monday, February 14, 2011

You are welcome!   more ›

The Balancing Act

It Takes a Gingerbread Village

A busy Oakmont mom tells the story of a less-than-perfect Christmas adventure.

It started as a simple idea. Last year at Light-Up Night in Pittsburgh, while walking through PPG Place marveling at all the architectural masterpieces in the massive gingerbread display, my cousins and I thought, "We can do this. It will be fun." So we picked a day where each of us had less than 10 things to do, met at my house and began baking and decorating. Gobs of hardened icing, bags of M&Ms and five batches of gingerbread later, we had the saddest looking North Pole ever. We had no plan — we just started baking and decorating — little hands flying everywhere. We ended up with one lopsided house that was supposed to be the toy shop, a train that was made by pressing cookie dough into the top of a butter dish, a sleigh shaped like a …

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