If you've walked around the pockets of shops off the Monon at 54th Street in South Broad Ripple,…read moreyou may have noticed a door with an eye-catching yet simple mural of scissors. It's beyond that door where creative and convivial owner offers a creative DIY modern maker space. HomeRoom empowers guests to move beyond their fears by teaching them how to design, repair, and/or create useful and meaningful objects for themselves, friends, family, and the community.
Don't expect the run-of-the-mill 'paper, gluesticks, and glitter' crafts. Think drivers/drills, hammers, sandpaper, handsaws, screwdrivers, pliers--and even sewing machines.
Leer is an experienced leader and expert, as an educator and contributor for Real Simple, Bob Vila online, Country Living, Apartmenttherapy.com, and the Indianapolis Star. She's also taught sewing classes The Indianapolis Art Center as well as at a local shelter for abused women and kids.
Leer offers private and custom workshops, summer camps, parties, and in-studio rentals. The recent classes include Beginning Sewing & Textile Arts, Maker Birthday Parties, and Upholstery for adults. Over the summer, Homeroom offers camps such as Crafty Entrepreneur Camp-where along the way, they learn financial literacy, design their goods, marketing, and sales skills.
Kid classes have been fondly called meditative and calming "junk drawer" parties. Parents enjoy the classes, as each experience integrates both STEM and STEAM curricula. Kids are so busy having fun and feeling a high sense of accomplishment that they don't even know they were learning valuable and practical skills.
Creativity flows, as kids use creatively use items such as grommet rings, earrings, fabric swatches, necklaces, charms, bells, broaches, keychains, buttons, keys, wood, vintage hardware, scrap metal conduit, laminates, wood, thread, beads, and metal tubing--even chop-sawed parquet floor tiles.
Check their website for the virtual and in-person class schedules or set up a time to stop in.