Featured Artist: Kathy Thomason

Kathy Thomason was born in 1953 in Batesville Arkansas. She spent a couple of years in Kentucky during college then came back eleven years ago to settle in Dunbar. Kathy is an avid reader who has written the Dusty Bookshelf column each month for the Amplifier since 1998. She also writes book reviews for several online publications. She is employed at WLBQ in Morgantown where she serves as both an on air personality and in sales.

Kathy has enjoyed crafts for most of her life. Her mother taught her to crochet and as a teen she enjoyed macramé and decoupage. Kathy decided to try her hand at beading because of the difficulty in finding bracelets small enough to fit her wrists. “I expanded into necklaces and earrings because I like them all to match.” she said.

As more friends and acquaintances started to inquire about having pieces created for them Kathy decided to start an online business she called Kat’s Kountry Kupboard. She has since developed a line of bath products including salts, soap, lotion, bath oils and lip gloss. “I not only make all my own products but I also decorate the containers they go in. I do custom orders on those also and do a booming business at Christmas.” She recently began making beads to sell or add to her jewelry. She sold out right away.

Kathy used several online tutorials at Ask.com to learn how to sell goods online. She says that her own site and etsy.com have garnered the best results. She has also had success with online malls. Her work can be found online at http://www.katskountrykupboard.etsy.com and at http://www.auctions.yahoo.com/user/kattho Kathy left ebay auctions earlier this year feeling that her items were lost in multitude. However she feels she has fared better on yahoo’s auctions.

In January Kathy will teach her first class for Butler County Community Education. For more information email kattho@yahoo.com.