Wolff's Flea Market Blog

By Guest Blogger Candice Lee Conner Not so fast! A Boot Pipe? PHOTO: Candice Lee Conner It's not everyday you come across a metal pipe with a boot bowl. I stumbled upon it, pun intended, at Wolff's Flea Market and purchased it for my mother in law. I loved the long stem and the Chinese drawings that were pressed onto the pipe.  What I didn't know at the time was that I had an antique opium pipe! Opium has been a popular drug throughout history, especially in China. This was until the 1950s when, through social reform, the selling and use of opium decreased significantly - which is why I believe it's rare to find pipes like these.  This pipe, like many pipes still out there, are more for decoration these days. For the boot pipe in particular, the second stem is missing from the top - note the hole on the left. There are also lots of cracks in the boot, which indicate that this item was crudely made. However, the artwork is intact and beautiful, and t

By Candice Lee Conner Graphic Designer, Photographer and Urban Archaeologist  When I was a kid, I loved going back to school for one reason - new school supplies. Notebooks, pencils, pens, HIGHLIGHTERS, crayons and markers. And to be perfectly honest, I still buy new supplies during the back to school sale, even though the last time I visited a classroom was in 2008.  All of my goodies would be thrown into my school box. I eventually went for the "cooler" neon plastic style. But until fourth grade, I had a cardboard crayon box. There's just something about an actual paper box that makes you want to hold all of your school essentials and tiny treasures.  The school box's ancestor is the noble cigar box. Kids would run to cigar establishments every summer to get a nice box for their treasures. Back then cigar boxes were free. Now...not so much. As cigar box school boxes became popular, two companies latched onto the idea and made their own kind of school box

Do you know about this hot repurposing trend?  Live edge wood is a vertical length slice. Sizes vary and include the natural edge, bark and beautiful imperfections. Now you can buy precut slices of Live Edge Wood at Wolff's Flea Market Palatine for your own DIY imagination. Pictured here is our first project sitting atop our reclaimed wood side table. Cedar was sanded, scraped and coated with semi gloss to bring out the amazing natural grain. Fast and easy project! More to come! Questions? Just ask us!