. . . And she turns passion
for jewelry into profit

By Dea Adria Mallin
For the Times

One white tent — with a stack of perky business cards identifying it as Juma Jewelry — was the standout booth at the 9th Street Italian Market Festival last year.
Passing the booth, I did a double-take and was making my second round of the jewelry when a hand reached for the very necklace I’d already set my heart on.
"I’ll take this," a voice said emphatically.
I watched as the exquisite piece was tenderly encased in tissue and a pretty presentation pouch. With the exchange looking more like Saks Fifth Avenue than a street fair, I was amazed to hear the vendor ask for only $85. The sheer number of finely cut and colored gemstones on the necklace would put its below-wholesale price at $85.
I asked the talented young vendor whether there were more pieces like the one that got away.
"I’ll make one tonight, and meet you here tomorrow. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to take it," she said.
Wow! A buyer’s dream.
The young woman is Judy Shelton, 36, a Fox Chase native who has been making jewelry for years as a hobby, and in the past two years she has fine-tuned it and turned it into a business.
Back when she was heading off to college, Shelton begged her father to let her study fashion and design. With his own origins in China, he believed education should lead to a secure job in the professional or business world. Her father regarded art as a hobby; Judy saw it as a passion.
But she heard her father’s voice and respected it. He had come here from China at 14, working and saving every penny so that finally, at 27, he could travel to China for a wife. She came from a well-educated and studious family that thought, like so many who have come to America’s shores, that the streets were paved with gold.
Together, the newlyweds came back to Philadelphia, and eventually, in the ’70s, Judy Shelton’s father became the owner of a very popular restaurant, the Jade Palace, on Cottman Avenue.
In deference to her father, Shelton studied marketing at Syracuse University, then moved into a fast-track, fast-paced career, spending 10 years in market research in New York City. But her early passion for design and its challenges drew her to several years of metalworking courses at the Lexington Avenue "Y", where she became expert at working with silver.
With her tools and her know-how, Shelton began to spend time in the city’s Garment District, wandering the worldly aisles of special finds and exotic beads, pearls and gemstones for inspiration.
Friends and colleagues began asking where she got her fabulous and original necklaces and earrings, and soon she was making jewelry on the weekends for friends and birthday and holiday gifts. At Fitness magazine, where she worked with the editor and publisher on market research, women who were making six-figure salaries selling ads hounded her for her jewelry and begged her to host jewelry parties.
"I was getting cash in the middle of the day!" Shelton recalled with a laugh.
Eventually, she was asked to do friends’ wedding jewelry, and even designed her own pearl necklace when she became a bride in 1999.
"I was heavily committed in the corporate world by then, so jewelry was a hobby, as my father told me it ought to be," she explained.
With marriage, however, came a move to Philadelphia, a first baby, and a daily commute to NYC that began to take a toll.
"By 2004, I was at home on Burholme Avenue with two babies and I needed to work, so I began the business officially," Shelton said. "I’m always interested in the creative side of color, and I love design, so I’d be happiest if I could just create and let others do the selling."
To watch her at a show is to understand this. She is so low-key that potential buyers almost have to seek out her attention.
"If they love the work, they find me," she said.
While the number of jewelry-making classes is burgeoning across the United States, enabling lots of people to learn the basics of necklaces, earrings and bracelets, Judy Shelton could never be called a "bead stringer."
Her work, in a modern idiom based on gemstones, stands out at juried shows because of the highest-quality gemstones and Shelton’s innate and unique feel for color and design. She points out that recent color innovations, created by a technology that uses heat treatments of gemstones, adds to the already seductive colorations of chalcedony, topaz, tourmaline, amethyst, iolite and sapphire.
At this year’s 9th Street Festival, my daughter and I fell for the same piece. Since we’re not as good as we’d like to be about sharing jewelry, I asked Shelton if she could make another, exactly like the first.
"Well," she replied, "it might be a just a little bit different."
Shelton never makes the same piece twice. She is not a production-line person, but strives to be an original, and nothing — not three daughters under 5, nor building her thriving business in just two years, nor the unknown of the future — is daunting to Judy Shelton.
But asking her to replicate a necklace? That made her raise her eyebrows a millimeter; with her generous nature, she readily agreed.
She is also fun to work with on design. When my daughter found a bracelet rich with translucent Peruvian opal, turquoise and aquamarine stones — the Caribbean, the Adriatic, and the Mediterranean —- all gathered on the wrist, she and Judy came up with the idea of putting an extender and a second toggle on the bracelet to transform it into a necklace. Add a few more links and it could be an anklet for lazy days at the Jersey Shore.
In two days, the bracelet cum necklace cum anklet was ready. How does she do it? Now nursing her third daughter, she and husband Michael keep the Juma Jewelry Web site current, find their way most weekends to juried art shows along the eastern seaboard, and have their course set for major jewelry shows around the country as well.
And she’s taking another class in metalworking at Cheltenham High School.
"I’m a multi-tasker and a night person," she said. "I usually stay up till three a.m., but last night I was tired, so I went to sleep at two a.m."
Bringing her jewelry to the juried shows leads Shelton to "little adventures" in design. Some customers want custom pieces. Others have urged her to do a complete bridal line. And then there is the kids jewelry line that she is launching.
One thing that regularly delights Shelton at the shows is the number of people from Northeast Philadelphia who attend and then become part of her customer base. When they see the address on her business card, they exclaim, "Oh, I know Burholme Avenue!" or "I live near Burholme Park!"
Does she want to be famous?
"Actually, I don’t need to see my work in Neiman Marcus or on movie stars," she replied. "I like the idea that my jewelry goes to people at affordable prices and that I can do custom work, and I’m honored that my customers love my pieces. It’s been home shows, juried shows, and word of mouth until last year, and although we have the Web site, you can’t touch the jewelry or try it on or see the intricacies of color reflecting and refracting light.
"So I’m delighted as my pieces go into salons, jewelry shops, clothing boutiques, and soon, I hope, into museum shops," she added. "I see the business as ensuring that we can send all three girls to college and have enough money so that Michael can follow his creative dreams in the future the way I’m following mine now."
Oh, and what about dad? What does he think?
"He’s proud," Shelton says, "and he supports me in his own way, offering to babysit when I have to go out and sell, so he’s really come around. Of course, he does think I’m ‘too humble’ in the pricing category, but he says he definitely sees the growth potential!" ••
For more information, visit the Web site at www.jumajewelry.com or send e-mail to info@jumajewelry.com