As the Marketplace interns, we have a few recommendations for our fellow D.C. summer interns, students, and other people living on the cheap.

This year’s Marketplace isn’t just a place to buy. It’s a place to meet some of Peru’s most talented artists and craftspeople and learn about the traditions behind the objects available for sale.

Whether it’s to decorate a Christmas tree, adorn a window, or add whimsy to a bookshelf, ornaments are a fun and inexpensive item to collect—especially at the Folklife Festival Marketplace.

Two hundred miles southeast of Lima, Ayacucho has a rich craft heritage—ceramics, painted tin, masks, and retablo (story boxes)—with techniques rooted in Wari culture of this Andean region from about 500 to 1000 AD.

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival Marketplace is hosting an invite-only, after-hours event on Miao embroidery, featuring China: Tradition and the Art of Living

With a heat index of 104⁰ in the capital today, Folklife Festival visitors might be more concerned with trying not to melt than with stopping to take in the arts and culture offered by participant artists.

Every year the Folklife Festival Marketplace features handmade crafts and traditional artwork by participants from the featured programs.

This winter, Folklife Festival Marketplace consultant Halle Butvin traveled to Kenya and China along with photographer Josh Eli Cogan to document the stories

At the Test Kitchen, three universities entered their cheeses into a blind taste-test competition.

The 2012 Festival Marketplace features items related to all three programs, including foods, music, and crafts.