GREENFIELD – When Mary Schuck opened The Gilded Nest downtown a couple years ago, she soon found she was running out of room for the handcrafted merchandise, up-cycled and vintage items, and art classes offered there.

Thanks to a recent move around the corner, her passion and those of her vendors’ have plenty of room to grow.

The Gilded Nest now operates across nearly 4,000 square feet at 10 W. Main St. in Greenfield after moving from its former location of about 1,400 square feet nearby on State Street.

The business offers handcrafted merchandise made in Indiana as well as up-cycled and vintage items from about 40 vendors. It also houses an art studio that hosts a variety of classes.

Among the handcrafted items are signs, pottery, pens, candles, quilts, aprons, jewelry, stuffed animals, leather goods and desserts.

“Most of what we have here is one of a kind,” Schuck said.

And many vendors are willing to customize.

“Which is one of the benefits of having a local person that will do your customizing, because they’re here and they’re motivated to do it,” she added.

The shop also has a vast collection of books, including used books, children’s books and a series of homeschooling materials that an artist illustrates with content written by dozens of experts who specialize in the different subjects.

The Gilded Nest’s Christian books are the reason the business exists in the first place. Schuck worked at Lifeway Christian Bookstore in Castleton until it closed, leaving her unsure of what to do next. People encouraged her to open her own Christian bookstore, but she was skeptical she’d be able to fill it.

Then she thought of how her father 30 years earlier opened J.W. Riley’s Emporium, an antique mall across the street from where The Gilded Nest is now located. She realized she could possibly support the books by having a variety of other goods for sale too.

After opening on State Street, The Gilded Nest overcame obstacles like the COVID-19 pandemic and Ind. 9 reconstruction that kept traffic away a third of the year.

But then another obstacle arose.

“The space was by far the biggest challenge that we faced on State Street,” Schuck said. “And we ran into that challenge very quickly as we started gaining vendors and customers, because fitting both vendors and customers in was becoming a thing.”

The business has been in its current location since June. Hometown Classic Pizza operated there before a fire in an upstairs apartment in 2020 forced the restaurant out, and it landed east of downtown on Main Street. The space was eventually restored after the fire, giving The Gilded Nest the opportunity to move in.

“Everything has been able to grow,” Schuck said.

The space was brightened up from the darker colors of its restaurant days.

“This was such a group effort to move over,” Schuck said.

Her vendors were part of that effort.

“They came in, they swept, they dusted, they built things, they took things down, they took walls down, they put walls up,” she recalled.

Her brother and nephew came from Ohio to paint, and her mother came up from Alabama to contribute her background in interior design.

“There’s not a better place than this building,” she said. “It’s on Main Street, it’s got good parking, it’s beautiful.”

Schuck is drawn to the kind of work The Gilded Nest requires. All of her professional life has been in retail. Her grandparents had a retail shop in Illinois. Her father opened the antique mall and her mother, along with being an interior designer, also had a bed-and-breakfast. All of her brothers had their own businesses.

“It’s in my blood,” Schuck said of the business side of her work. “…I put in a lot of hours, but it doesn’t feel like it. Of course any job has its things, but I still wake up in the morning and get excited about coming in. I don’t mind staying late to do whatever needs to be done.”

She’s just as passionate about the vendor side.

“So much talent, and I get to promote all of these people who do amazing things,” she said. “What more fun could you have? And they do all the work! They’re good people, they’re local, the amount of skill and talent that is contained in these walls is spectacular.”

Udders-N-Suds, which makes goat milk bath products and other products from goat milk, has its own staffed shop area in The Gilded Nest building. The business had been associated with The Gilded Nest in its former location, and is able to have its own presence in the new, bigger spot.

“Her business was booming and she needed a storefront, but she didn’t need a whole storefront,” Schuck said. “So this is the perfect size for her.”

Belinda Campbell, Udders-N-Suds’ proprietor, is happy to be a part of the space.

“They have everything in this building,” Campbell said. “I cannot walk through without finding something. And the vendors are wonderful. It’s the tight-knit family that you get that makes it all work.”

Also part of that family are local artists teaching a variety of classes in The Gilded Nest’s art studio, like painting, pottery and mixed media. Michelle Kimberlin teaches several painting classes there, including watercolor, acrylic and kids classes, and also has paint parties and workshops. She likes the new, larger, space, where she enjoys watching her students enjoy the art they create.

“Art’s supposed to be fun,” she said. “And when I see them coming to my class – and, let’s face it, sometimes the world right now is crazy and stressful – and my goal is for people to come into my studio and come into my class and just forget about everything for a couple hours and just enjoy themselves. And when I see that, I feel like I’ve accomplished what I wanted to do.”