Brooklyn Based tipped us off about The Brooklyn Sampler, a beautiful package of items made or designed here in Brooklyn, by artists, designers and crafters who hail from Bed-Stuy, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Ditmas Park, East New York, Fort Greene, Greenpoint, Kensington, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Sunset Park, Williamsburg, and Windsor Terrace, and whose work is available at fabulous boutiques like Spring in Dumbo, Rare Device in Park Slope, the Brooklyn Indie Market, or online at that one-stop-shop for handmade goods, Etsy.

This box is so Brooklyn, it’s even wrapped in Brooklyn maps and lined with The Brooklyn Paper (there’s also a map of the future Brooklyn Greenway and a Zagat’s guide to BK restos inside).

Here’s the other kicker: It’s $20 (plus shipping), an incredible value for one-of-a-kind work made by your gifted neighbors, curated by Brooklyn Based, and sold by The Sampler, a San Francisco company whose founder Marie Kare came up with this brilliant idea of mailing boxes filled with the wares of indie businesses to spread the word about their work. This month they began a series of Samplers called City Samplers, packed with goods native to one place. It launched with their hometown, and Brooklyn Based happened to call at the right moment and propose a box filled with goodies made by Brooklynites.

Brooklyn Based is a tri-weekly email that will tell you about what’s going on in Brooklyn. Sort of a Daily Candy for Brooklyn I think. Founder/Editor Nicole Davis is also the arts editor of three community papers in Manhattan, and writes for a number of publications. She moved to Brooklyn in 1997, and lives in Clinton Hill with her husband. Turns out that the Brooklyn Sampler is a collaboration between Brooklyn Based and The Sampler, a company in San Francisco. Davis wrote me in an email: “I called them and said, “Wouldn’t it be great if I put together a sampler of just Brooklyn goods and they said, “How did you know we had just begun doing City Samplers (which focus on one place)?”

So it was serendipity. They agreed to let me curate it, and I rounded everyone up and got the stuff to them, and am trying to promote it as best I can. The Sampler folks do a lot of promoting, too and decoupage the boxes, so they should look great,

Davis describes Brooklyn Based, as a much more in-depth version of Manhattan Users Guide for Brooklyn– a lifestyle newsletter (art, events, food, etc) with a little focus on shopping. Here’s the blurb from the Brooklyn Based website.

Like all good things, we come in threes — three emails a week that will help you get the most out of the County of Kings.

We won’t cram your inbox with a laundry list of things to do, or convince you to buy things you don’t need, or tell you the same exact thing you already learned from your favorite blog, mag or paper. (And we certainly won’t spam you.)

Think of us as an essential supplement to the best food, art, services, shops and people the borough has to offer: Brooklyn distilled.

Sound good? Then sign up for Brooklyn Based, delivered Tuesday through Thursday.