Crossroads Farm at Grossmann’s held its first artisan market of the spring season on Sunday. The market featured booths run by local brands, all of which used their crafts to alleviate personal struggles, which inspired the creation of their brands.
Shamisa Élysée created Shea Élysée, a shea butter brand, motivated by her own struggles with skin conditions like eczema and dermatitis. Élysée was interested in creating natural products, so she combined her hobby with her personal challenge to create the product. “I was prescribed a lot of harsh medication,” she said, “and it never worked.”
Élysée, a 2025 graduate of SUNY Oswego, created the shea butter when she was a 17-year-old student in high school in Lynbrook. She and a niece were both dealing with skin problems, and her niece had aggressive allergic reactions to other medicines.
“I made this shea butter with the intention to alleviate pain from skin conditions, like the eczema my niece had,” Élysée recounted. “I like to take my own terrible experience and use it to help other people with the same skin problems.”
The customer that Élysée said stood out to her the most was a man whose daughter had autism and was sensitive to most other skin products. “Her skin would crack and bleed because she wouldn’t use any other products,” Élysée said. “Her dad tried our shea butter on her skin, and she said she liked it. He told me, ‘She actually said yes when I asked her if she liked it. Her favorite word is no.’”
Élysée’s sister, Samantha, is a nurse in a hospital oncology ward. “She says the hospital lotion doesn’t work on some cancer patients’ skin, so she uses our product,” Élysée said. “Doctors also need to wash their hands constantly, so our product works well for their dry skin, too.”
She empathizes with people with skin conditions, and how they present themselves publicly. It impacted how she designed her product’s container. “It’s embarrassing to go to CVS and pull a clinical-looking white bottle off a shelf,” she said. “Our product’s presentation helps people feel like they’re taking care of themselves instead of medically treating something wrong with them.”
The market also featured two jewelry booths. Cheryl Mirkin owns and runs Upcycled Vintage Vibe Earrings, selling in markets across the Northeast. She uses materials that would otherwise be discarded to create the jewelry — film rolls, bottle caps, computer keys and puzzle pieces, among many other materials.
“Everything had a previous life before I turned them into earrings,” Mirkin said. “The very first pair of earrings I made were made of zipper pulls from a pair of boots I had to throw away. I really liked those boots, and wanted to keep a part of them.”
Mirkin is a graphic designer, and said she lost a lot of business during the pandemic, so she expanded her jewelry-making business. “During Covid, a lot of my business disappeared, so I started selling the earrings more,” she said. “The business has grown a lot since then — there are over 80 different objects that I upcycle.”
One pair of earrings Mirkin takes special pride in is made of Susan B. Anthony postage stamps imprinted with ‘Suffrage for Women’ at the bottom. “It is unfortunate now, 100 years later, that there are people still fighting for their voting rights in this country,” she said.
Mirkin has long been aware of the waste that people produce daily, and prefers to make use of things that are often discarded. “When people see my things, they realize that they don’t have to throw everything away,” she said. “There’s just so much stuff in landfills. We really need to think about not letting so much go to waste.”
Cathy Buckley started Cat’s Meow Handmade Art Jewelry in 2013. A nurse by trade, she started making jewelry on the side after taking a jewelry-making class. “I would bring what I made in the class to my colleagues,” she said.
Buckley is self-taught, and has taken metalsmithing as well as jewelry-making and jewelry enameling classes to improve her craft. “I make all my stuff from flat sheets of metal,” she explained.
Buckley’s son has cerebral palsy and needs constant care, so she makes her jewelry to de-stress between her responsibilities at work and at home. “I do this to keep myself sane,” she said. “My son has a lot of needs, and I have to help him with his challenges, so it’s just a break from that.”
The artisan market is expected to run through September, on June 14, July 12, August 9, and September 13.
