Brooklyn Flea

If you’ve scoped out the Flea’s winter digs at One Hanson, you know that it’s easy to find something for everyone on your gift list. (Remember that while we are closed Christmas and New Year's weekends, we've scheduled extra shopping days on Friday, December 16; Wednesday, December 21; and Thursday, December 22, from 2 to 9pm.)

Our vendors know how to celebrate the season, with everything from savory stocking stuffers to glitzy getups perfect for a New Year’s bash. We’ve also got everything you need to trim the tree and deck the halls with vintage decorations. Check out our picks for some of the coolest retro ornaments and décor—they’re festive with just a pinch of kitsch.

If you smelled something fresh around the Fort Greene Flea, it was probably Chrissy Fichtl’s Apotheke candles and soaps. Three years ago, Chrissy bought a soap-making kit online because “it seemed like a fun thing to do on a Saturday,” and soon she was selling her wares at farmers markets in the Hamptons. These days, soap-making is a full-time gig for the former chef, who also whips up private-label signature scents for spas and salons from a makeshift studio in her Clinton Hill apartment.

Fichtl crafts candles from soy wax and essential oils. Since they don’t contain perfumes, the candles burn cleanly and slowly for about 65 hours, without black smoke or soot. She concocts festive autumnal varieties like orange cinnamon, throwback summer scents like lemongrass and cozy, wintry cedar.

The thick, 5 oz. bars of soap are chock-full of natural ingredients, and don’t include any coloring, parabens or fillers. The bars are made from coconut, palm and essential oils, and come in super-moisturizing cocoa butter, gentle Japanese charcoal soap for sensitive skin, and refreshing, tangy scents like grapefruit and tangerine. Since ladies aren’t the only ones who like to get clean, Chrissy also sells bars tailored to dudes and dogs. The cedarwood-scented shaving soap made from bensonite clay works a guy’s stubble into a bubbly lather. The Pipa soap for dogs—named after Chrissy’s dauchsund, the company’s unofficial mascot—contains eucalyptus for a smooth coat and rosemary to soothe hot spots.

We asked Chrissy to show us how to make our own soap using materials we can find at the grocery store. Click here to read the how-to.

(And though Apotheke is done for the Flea season, the full selection of soaps is available through their Etsy store.)

You’ll need:

• 11 oz olive oil
• 6 oz safflower oil
• 6 oz peanut oil
• 2.83 oz Rooto lye (100% pure lye; find it at the hardware store)
• 10 oz bottled distilled water
• 1.5 oz essential oil (stop by a health food store for scents like lavender, grapefruit, or basil)
• Plastic gloves
• Goggles
• Scale
• Plastic container with a lid (try a take-out container or a mason jar with lid)
• Plastic pitcher or glass bowl
• Thermometer
• Whisk
• Immersion hand blender
• Stainless steel pot
• Milk quart carton (clean)

Here’s what you do:

1.) Put the plastic pitcher on the scale and set it to zero. Weigh out the 10 oz. of water and put to the side. Next, weigh out the 2.83 oz. of lye. Remove from the scale and cover.

2.) In a highly-ventilated area (ideally, outdoors), pour the lye into the water. (Safety note: always wear gloves and goggles while working with lye. If you splash yourself, immediately wash the exposed area with soap and water to stop the burn.)

3.) Slowly whisk the water-lye mixture to dissolve the lye.

4.) Monitor the temperature—the mixture needs to reach 100 degrees.

5.) Cool the mixture in a place that is out of the reach of children and animals.

6.) Use the scale tomeasure out quantities of olive, safflower, and peanut oils. Heat on the stove in the stainless steel pot until the mixture reaches 100 degrees.

7.) Add the lye-water mixture to the oils in the pot. Using the immersion blender, blend the mixture together in five-second spurts (keep the blender on the bottom of the pot to minimize splashing). Blend until the mixture has a gravy-like texture.

8.) Add the essential oil and blend using the whisk.

9.) Pour the mixture into a milk carton and staple it closed. You want the carton to stay hot, so wrap a towel around it to keep the heat in. Set aside for 36 hours.

10.) Wearing your goggles and gloves, wash your utensils with lots of hot, soapy water.

11.) After the mixture has set for 36 hours, rip the milk carton and cut the soap into bars. (Wear your gloves!) The soap will need to continue to cure for about three weeks.

Husband-and-wife duo John and Ariel Covello, the team behind Little Gardens, are urban plant-whisperers. John, a fine jeweler, and Ariel, a former events planner for a small bookstore, have been tending to their own gardens for years, but just recently turned their attention to plants full-time. These two have cultivated some seriously green thumbs. The Covellos pot their plants in cool containers, like antique Hudson River bricks they find in their Bensonhurst backyard. The hearty alpine succulents, including the aptly-named sempervivum, Latin for “live forever,” are “perfect for people who forget to water their plants,” says Ariel. It would be hard for even the most negligent plant parent to butcher one of these tiny, low-maintenance gardens. We asked Ariel and John to teach us about planting succulents—and keeping them alive. Click here to read the how-to.

You’ll need:

• Succulents
• Soil (try cactus mix)
• Pebbles
• Flowerpot or other container with drainage hole
• Pencil

Here’s what you do:

1) Line the bottom of the flowerpot with a few pebbles. (This will help the soil drain.)

2) Fill the flowerpot with porous soil. John whips up batches of his homemade, sand-heavy mixture, but you can buy cactus mix from a garden center. Just make sure that the soil is designed for cacti or succulents.

3) Use a pencil to make a little hole in the soil. Rest the roots in the hole and gently pat more soil over the top. (Unlike other kinds of plants, these succulents don’t need to be placed deeply in the soil.)

4) Water thoroughly. Ariel recommends the “total immersion” method: fill up the sink, tub, or bucket with water, and then gently submerge the pot or other container—this prevents the soil from being blasted away by the stream from a faucet. Make sure that the plant drains fully before you place it in on a saucer or back on the windowsill—excess moisture causes the roots to rot.

5) Place the plant in direct sunlight—the brighter, the better.

6) Water again when the soil feels completely dry. Depending on the strength of the sunlight, this could be a week or more. Ariel recommends “letting the plants get bone dry, then drenching them.”

Flea fave Michelle Han crafts adorable hand-printed woodblock and linocut prints on beautiful papers and linens. After stints as a journalist in Philly, New Jersey, and Long Island, Han relocated to Brooklyn and returned to her art-making roots when she realized that she craved “the smell of oil paint and turpentine and the sounds of the studio.” These days, Michelle finds inspiration outdoors. She scours apartment stoops for abandoned books with well-worn, yellowed pages, which she turns into beautiful backgrounds for her whimsical prints of plants and birds. From her perch on the hill in Fort Greene Park, Michelle sketches the sprawling cityscape and the natural elements that stand out against it. “I’ve always liked looking up at the sky and seeing the outlines of trees,” she says. “Since there’s a lot of silhouetting and positive and negative space, the outline lends itself to printmaking.” We asked Michelle to walk us through a printmaking project for beginners—click here to see the how-to.

You'll need:

• paper, pencil, tracing paper, carbon paper
• linoleum block or soft wood block
• linoleum carving tool or wood cutting tool
• brayer (rubber rolling tool for block printing)
• block printing ink
• non-porous palette (try glass, styrofoam, or wax paper)
• paper to print on

Here’s what you do:

1.) Sketch a design on paper.

2.) Trace your sketch on tracing paper, then transfer it to the block by outlining the design on carbon paper. Since the design will print as a mirror image, it’s helpful to flip the sketch at this stage. Turn the design facedown, slip carbon paper between the tracing and block, and outline the back of the sketch.

3.) Using a carving tool, carefully carve away the negative space, leaving only the positive space of the image. Carve using a forward sliding motion against the block. Secure the block with your other hand, and keep your fingers away from the blade!

4.) Use a brayer to spread out block-printing ink on a flat, non-porous palette—such as a piece of glass, a styrofoam tray, or a piece of wax paper—until the ink's consistency is even and velvety.

5.) Use the inked-up brayer to spread ink evenly over the block.

6.) Place paper over the block, and apply pressure to the paper using your palm or the back of a wooden spoon.

7.) Carefully pull the print from the block. You can add some pops of color with markers or paints.

Welcome to our newest blog feature, where Jessica Leigh takes you behind the scenes of Flea vendors' craft magic: How do you make a terrarium? What exactly is "re-purposing" a chair? I want to make stuffed pillows too! Jessica will highlight a new vendor every couple of weeks, and for her first post Kate Durkin shows us how to, yes, make our own cute, snuggly stuffed pillows. (Note: click on the link below to visit the how-to page.)

Kate Durkin’s hand-embroidered creatures are adorable naptime companions for both tired toddlers and sleepy grown-ups. Durkin’s playful pillows exemplify her trademark mix of “design and whimsy.” The cotton-based fabrics are soft and safe for any animal enthusiasts, including teething babies who try to take a bite out of one of the sweet owls, giraffes, or whales. The pillows are backed with bold, graphic patterns, which Durkin scores on Etsy or by digging through the fabric racks in the garment district. Kate’s work embodies the can-do DIY mantra: this painter-turned pillow-maker is a self-taught sewer. We asked Kate to share some tips for aspiring crafters looking to sew up a storm. She walked us through the steps involved in making one of her cuddly critters—click here to see the how-to. Grab a thimble and get creative!