Makeshop™

A creative space to play with ideas, explore materials, and tinker with tools.

Children's Museum of Pittsburgh

MAKEnight, April 4

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MAKEnight is an amazing event held at the Museum.  It is an after-hours event that lets adults (and only adults) play and explore in the Museum.  The event has been a huge success over the past couple of months.  We decided to make this latest MAKEnight a little bit different from the others. Typically, we only have attendees explore and…

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Youth invade MAKESHOP

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On February 22nd, we held our second Youth Maker Night.  This was an after-hours event with a lot of tweens and teens, and no parents.  We offered some new activities for the youth to try, including felting, recycled derby cars, e-textiles, tinkering with motors, and a demonstration of a 3D printer.  It took the kids awhile to ease into the…

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MAKEnight

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The third MAKEnight, an after hours event for adults, was held onFebruary 7th and it was a blast!  Over 150 adults visited the museum for a fun night of making. We had many activities in MAKESHOP and STUDIO that encouraged people explore and create.  In MAKESHOP, we let people felt using special felting needles along with a form of wet…

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MAKEnight, December 6

Adults enjoying the museum during MAKEnight

MAKEnight is an event held after hours at the Museum where adults can visit the museum to make things and meet new people while enjoying some food by Bar Marco and drinks from Wigle Whiskey. We held our second MAKEnight on December 6, 2012 with a sold out crowd! If you missed it, then mark your calendars for the next one on February 7!…

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Youth Maker Night

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In November, MAKESHOP hosted the first ever Youth Maker Night.  Kids, ages 10 to 15, were given the opportunity to visit MAKESHOP after hours without their parents.  We had a lot of electricity activities for the youth to make things and explore.  The circuit blocks were out with some conductive play-doh. We also had LED lights and conductive tape, and…

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Activated Origami

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This was really cool workshop taught by one of our favorite guest makers, Sibel Deren Guler.  Visitors were able to explore and learn how to create several origami projects.  They were then encouraged by Deren and me to add lights and motors to their creations.  This was the first time I witnessed activated origami and I loved it. These special…

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On the Edge of Your Seat

At the end of last month, Children’s Museum Board Members gathered at the Museum for a Board retreat.  How do you get to know your fellow Board Chairs? By dividing into teams and having a “chair” contest of course! A MAKESHOP Challenge was presented to the group:  Divide into teams of six and create a meaningful chair using a container…

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Adults in MAKESHOP!

We held our very first MAKEnight a couple of days ago.  We essentially let a bunch of adults play and explore in MAKESHOP after the Museum closed.  The theme of our first night was electricity.  We had our 3D Printer on display creating some models.  We also had our circuit blocks out, the EggBot, conductive play-dough and copper tape tinkering….

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Halloween came early…

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We started prototyping some projects for October acouple of days ago.  It was really hard not to go with a Halloween theme.  Alexis and I spent the morning creating some DIY decorations for the MAKESHOP.  I figured that it would be really cool to add some electronics to some simple cardboard decorations. As always, this process of prototyping programming is…

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Goofing off at Maker Faire

We hosted the second annual Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire last week.  It was a lovely day full of lovely people.  I could go on in great detail about all the gadgets and amazing inventions on display.  Instead, what I noticed most during the day was a sense of goofiness.  Everyone was genuinely having fun. We had so much fun at…

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