

OUR STORY
Matt Carlson
Director of the Maker's Lab & Jack-of-all-Trades

The Play Museum and Maker’s Lab were created by two people who believe creativity isn’t just for childhood — it’s a way of living and learning at every age.
Lisa comes from a world of music, imagination, and teaching. As the heart behind Play/Music Studio, she has spent years helping kids (and herself) build confidence through piano, songwriting, and creative exploration. Her approach blends play with real learning — where curiosity leads and skills naturally follow. The Play Museum grew from that same philosophy: a place where creativity feels alive, hands stay busy, and learning feels like discovery rather than work.
Then Matt — a builder, problem-solver, and the kind of person that turns ideas into reality — brought in the laser cutters and 3D printers and created the Maker’s Lab. Matt values learning by doing — trying, failing, adjusting, and trying again — because real understanding comes from real experience. With a love for tools, design, and figuring out how things work, he helps transform imagination into things you can actually build.
Together, we created the Play Museum and Maker’s Lab. For us, it's more than a business — it’s a shared experiment in creativity. Music, art, engineering, design, invention, and play all under one roof. It’s a place where both kids and adults can explore, experiment, tinker, learn, create, build, and play.
We believe that creativity starts with fun. If people aren’t enjoying themselves, they won’t feel inspired to create. And Matt and I both have an extreme love for toys — not just ordinary toys, but fascinating, unusual, and thought-provoking ones. The museum is filled with unique gadgets, kinetic objects, illusions, and playful inventions designed to capture attention and spark curiosity. The kids love them, and just as often you’ll find adults even more fascinated than kids with many of our items.
We also believe curiosity is the starting point for discovery and understanding, and that it should be cultivated. Both the Play Museum and the Maker’s Lab designed this space to create a sense of wonder and possibility. We offer new ways to explore, create, and think differently.
Our goal isn’t just to teach people how to make things. It’s to help them come up with the ideas in the first place — and then learn how to make them real. And that takes more than just tools. It takes planning, problem-solving, experimentation, and learning to work through challenges when you don’t already know the answer. It means using your brain, your hands, and real materials to test ideas, adjust, and find solutions
.
We believe kids don’t get enough of this anymore. School often focuses on knowing answers instead of working through new problems that you can’t just look up the answer for. Here, we make space for thinking, experimenting, and creating.
When kids explore and tinker, they don't just learn how to build - they learn how to think, invent, and believe their ideas are possible. Here at the Play Museum & Maker's Lab, we empower people to bring their ideas to life. Not only by showing them it is possible to do it yourself, but also by giving people the real world tools and equipment to bring their ideas to life, and teaching them how to use them.
Welcome to the Play Museum and Maker’s Lab — where curiosity leads, ideas grow, and imagination turns into something real.

15% Off All Items
Lisa Frimberger
Music Instructor Extraordinare