This post is sponsored by 3rd Ward.

3rd Ward is a multidisciplinary workspace & education center in Brooklyn, NY. Work. Learn. Make

It’s Cyber Monday and the pants-free virtual mall has deals on much more than just giant flat screen TVs and iProducts. Here’s a special offer from local DIY incubator, artistic co-working utopia and alterna-learning hub 3rd Ward. Today only, you can be a muse for your loved ones to get creative and learn something new this holiday season with a special promo-code for 25 percent off all 3rd Ward offerings site-wide.

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Come visit Jocelyn Rosenberg and Susan Siegel for your fuzzy scarf needs.

On Black Friday (that’s this week, oy!), instead of waking up at 4am to beat insane crowds at Wal-mart, check out BrooklynARTERY, a holiday craft shop in the restaurant-rich but retail-starved suburbanish neighborhood of  Ditmas Park. The only thing resembling a boutique for miles—at least until Brooklyn Industry opens—the ARTery features products that support Brooklyn artists and fair trade.

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Sure looks bizarre. Via Brooklyn Night Bazaar.

Brooklyn’s answer to the recession: make consumerism a party! The Brooklyn Night Bazaar is back for a festive holiday season run of shopping, food, music, booze every Friday and Saturday from Nov. 23 through Dec. 22, 6pm-midnight, at 45 N. 5th St (b/t Wythe & Kent) in Williamsburg. Featuring more than 200 of the top local makers, artists, vendors, brewers, and artisanal food purveyors, plus a curated music lineup each night, you can get all your shopping done while getting drunk and listening to a hip soundtrack in a massive warehouse. Multitasking, Brooklyn-style.  (more…)

Get 15 percent off animal butt magnets at Future Perfect.

We’re not going to tell you how to shop this weekend. We’re going to tell you how not to shop. For the love of [insert deity here], does anyone  really need to:

1) Shop on Thanksgiving, when some retailers (Old Navy!) are forcing their employees to come to work?
2) Shop at midnight on Thursday, when Target, Best Buy, Kohls and Macy’s are forcing their employees to come to work?
3) Get up at 4 a.m. on Friday to stalk big-box stores for $10 DVDs?

Why not roll out of bed at a reasonable hour and head to the boutique down the block? Some of Brooklyn’s independent retailers are making it even easier this year by having holiday sales.

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We’re almost hesitant to tell you where to get one of these wallets. Because since we got one at the Brooklyn Flea a few months back, it’s proved to be tops for eye-grabbing gawking from jealous admirers and has led to lots of “ooh”s of wonderment from many a cashier. Made by DUMBO-based Dynomighty Design, the Air Mail Mighty Wallet ($15) is both durable (built out of the same microfiber material as air mail envelopes), and flexible, so it’ll swell to accommodate as many credit cards, receipts or bills (oh to have that problem) as you need to carry. Slim enough so it won’t bulge out of your stylish silhouette on a night out, but also consider it for the vegans on your shopping list: Do you know how hard it is to find a decent non-leather wallet? Check out the company’s other designs too, including an MTA map, loose-leaf notebook paper and a dot matrix printout. Buy the Mighty Wallet online or check the site to find a store that sells it.

Craigslist contains some items (okay, most) that we wouldn’t even want for free (bedsheets? um, no thanks.), and some that are interesting, like The Crotch, but we don’t really want to pay more than $20 for (The Crotch is $500). And there are some places we just won’t go to pick up a really cheap item. Like Connecticut. But there are great cheap and sometimes free gems you could pass off as holiday presents to the right person (like this retro bench). Here are some of them. (more…)

Here’s an ongoing list of our favorite gift ideas for under $25, sold in Brooklyn or made by locals. If you have a great find for this daily post, please send photos and descriptions to faye [at] brokelyn [dot] com. And check the site every day through Christmas.

#1 “Hand soaps”

We were working on an altogether different item when we came across this irresistible little dish of “hand soaps” from Cog & Pearl, the Park Slope eclectica shop for Design*Sponge obsessives. So tickled were we by these sudsy sculpturettes that they inspired a new series: each day until Christmas, we’ll be highlighting one fun, under-$25 gift item that you can buy in Brooklyn. Our first entry: a green organza bag featuring roughly this array of 10 hand soaps for only $20. Buy it online or in-store at Cog & Pearl if we haven’t snarfed them all first.

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