New gift shop to fill special niche in Proctorville
Proctorville — It’s a business that grew out of a vacation pasttime. That’s how Bowenkles, a new gift shop on the main street of the village of Proctorville, came about.
“This is something I have always wanted to do,” Tina Bowen, owner, said. “Where my husband and I have done some traveling, it was so much fun to go into little shops at different places and look around and buy things that are not the same old-same old.”
Bowen, a respiratory therapist and nurse, is focusing on this new venture with an assist from her husband, Herman Bowen, an area contractor.
“We wanted to spend more time trying to work for ourselves,” Tina Bowen, of Scottown, said.
The shop on State Street, right inside the village limits that used to be a doctor’s office, opened the end of November and features a variety of gift and home décor items. There are handmade candles, the majority of which Bowen makes herself.
“A pretty good friend of mine taught me. It is lots of fun,” she said. “I do jar candles in different sizes and one size of cake candle.”
There is also scented potpourri, Longaberger throws, purses, pottery, necklaces and bracelets in copper and silver and the famous baskets.

