Meet Kylie Thomas of Gilbert

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kylie Thomas

Hi Kylie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Back in December of 2020 I was miserable working at a salon so my fiancé encouraged me to quit my job and for us to create a small business together. In February of 2021 I was scrolling through Tiktok and came across a video of someone putting borax crystals onto a Cubone skull and thought, “oh, that would be cool if someone made a Cubone terrarium… or better yet if someone made bug Pokémon shadowboxes” and then I immediately started to google those things to see if anyone had. To my surprise no one had so we had our business idea. We got started right away conceptualizing and our Butterfree shadowbox was our first ever product to be conceptualized. Early March of 2021 is when we went “live” with our shop and socials and pretty much saw immediate success with it. To our surprise, a Tiktok we posted went somewhat viral and that gave us a nice boost of sales in the beginning which projected us to beyond anything we could have imagined. Next March marks 4 years that we have been a business.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
For the most part it has been a pretty smooth road for us. 2022 was probably the roughest year for us but it wasn’t awful. Unfortunately, with this kind of business we don’t get paid every two weeks and only get paid when making sales. So the finances can be sometimes concerning or the amount of work I have can be very stressful and it can kind of flip back and forth between the two. Over the years I believe I have developed a pretty good work-life balance, albeit bad habits can sneak up at times.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I would probably say I specialize in sculpture and painting. I’m known for being able to capture a lot of detail in small pieces (so much so that our Majora’s Mask terrarium gets mistaken for us buying a sculpture off the internet and sticking it in the terrarium instead of us sculpting it and painting it ourselves) I’m most proud of my creativity and innovativeness when it comes to problem solving things with the business or things in general. I love taking on new projects and trying to figure out how I’m going to do them. For example, when I was doing research on the wings for our shadowboxes, I wanted something that was somewhat transparent but also sturdy. Vellum paper turned out to be the best thing for us and even then, we had to go through several different types of vellum paper to find the one we liked the most. What sets us apart is definitely our attention to detail and professionalism. There are now many copycats of us out there, but you can definitely tell a quality difference and that gives me major peace of mind.

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
We never mind our work being shared as long as credit is given and our shop is linked. That is probably the best way to support us! But as far as collaborations go, send us a DM or an email and we can always discuss it!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://overcastoddities.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/overcast.oddities
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/overcast.oddities

Image Credits
Images taken by Gannon Hart