By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
Christy Nolen Stamper has had passion for design for a long time.
“I have always had an interest (in design),” Stamper explained. “I’ve always been really, really crafty. All through high school and stuff I was always in art class – doing this, doing that. Then as I got older I was like, ‘Wait a minute? I can do something to make a profit!’ So, back in 2018 I was pregnant and me and my husband decided, let’s just go ahead and start. Try this thing out. So we went out and started purchasing the equipment. I started working from home and doing it from there so I could stay home and not have to return to the orthodontics office I was working at.”
If Stamper had always had an interest and passion for art and design, moving to make it her career caused her to fall deeply and madly in love with it.
“I loved it,” she said of her new work. She set up an etsy shop (www.etsy.com/shop/TrinitySistersDesign), and began pushing her work through social media.
“Then I was selling stuff on Facebook. It started from there and then came to this,” she said, gesturing around at the shop, located in a refurbished dry cleaners shop on Railroad Street in downtown Olive Hill.
“The help of friends and family is actually what’s made this what it is,” Stamper said. “We had to completely strip (the building) out. There were walls up that we had to take out. We took all of the (dry cleaning) equipment out that was in here… Then started from scratch.”
The design of the shop takes advantage of the building’s innate charm, though, with areas of exposed brick and original plaster kept on some walls.
“We wanted to keep some of the original stuff to the building,” Stamper said. “You know, some of the walls and stuff, yeah, they’re a little bit rustic, but we kind of liked that feeling.”
The name of the business, Trinity Sisters’ Design, reflects the close relationship between the three sisters and their faith.
“We’re three sisters,” Stamper said. “And we’re really, really close and wanted to keep everything together. So when we talked about doing this I told them, ‘We need something that represents the three of us.’ We’re real big into church and stuff, so I told the girls, ‘There’s three of us, let’s do Trinity,’ then with us being sisters and design, it just fell into place.”
That faith is reflected in some of the original designs on t-shirts in the shop, such as the mustard yellow shirt with a quote about having “faith the size of a mustard seed” from the book of Matthew, and another with the commandment to “love one another” taken from the book of John. Others reflect the busy life of a mother, something Stamper knows well as the mother of a toddler. These original designs, and others, are mixed in with boutique offerings and other items.
The sisters – Christy Nolen Stamper, Ashley Nolen Johnson, and Brooke Nolen – held their ribbon cutting and grand opening on Saturday. The shop, located at 420 Railroad Street in Olive Hill, is open from 9 – 5 Monday – Friday and 9 – 2 on Saturday.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
