Retiring to Hawaii in 1995 and going into business selling fossils and stuff was a brilliant idea for Fran and Wes Cummins.

No surprise there, the two were teachers so they were smart, and their inventory came straight out of fossil and rock quarries in Utah that belonged to Fran’s family.

Selling fossils started out as a way to make an extra $10,000 “every year, to have a big vacation,” Fran said. They made $40,000 the first year.

“Sometimes you wish for things and it works, and then you have to deal with the consequences.”

The retired community college teachers did so well on the mainland, they grew from one to three seasonal stores in California shopping malls and raked in the money.

When they arrived in Hawaii as Two Teachers Digging Science, “it was quite a shock that tourists did not want to put a 30-pound fossil in their suitcase,” Fran quipped.

Even though they didn’t lease seasonal mall space here, a shift of business model was in order.

“We branched out into jewelry,” made from semiprecious gemstones, pearls and fossils,” she said.

“We used to do high-end jewelry,” but now their hand-tooled jewelry is more affordable, made with sterling silver or 14-karat filled gold, using what is called a wire-wrapping technique. “No soldering, no glue, just hand tools,” she said.

Prices range from $10 for earrings up to $50 to $70 for bracelets and pendants, some of which incorporate koa wood.

For pendants “we usually include a strand of beads or pearls in the price, because most people will give you one of those cheap chains … that get really bad and turn your neck green right before they break,” she said. “It has turned out to be a very good sales pitch,” she added.

Fran and her son Van make the jewelry, while Fran’s husband, Wes, “is my best seller,” she said. Van is “a really good jewelry maker” and is “becoming my business partner,” the proud mom added.

Fran is 75 and Wes is 78, so son Van is responsible for the heavy lifting and toting of tents and tables for craft fairs, which is quite helpful, she said.

The trio is out there selling 15 or 16 weekends each year, but also sells in about half a dozen galleries around the state.

Nancy Calhoun can’t say enough good things about them.

As executive director of the Handcrafters and Artisans Alliance and organizer of the Waikiki Artfest at Kapiolani Park near the bandstand, she has known the Cumminses for years.

Wes would often have a little something set aside for the kids, to keep them occupied while the grown-ups shopped, Calhoun said. “He’d reach in his pocket and pull out fossilized dinosaur poop” to the children’s delight, and would tell them to hang on because he’d also give them a “poop sheet,” explaining the desiccated dino dung, Calhoun chuckled.

“If I see a tourist, I’d rather they get something that is really handmade in Hawaii, rather than an absolutely lovely muumuu that came in from Indonesia,” said Calhoun.

In addition to the Waikiki Artfests, the teachers are regulars at the Made in Hawaii Festival, the holiday craft fair in Lanikai and other large annual events.

They do not have a website. While not technology averse, the lack of website is to help prevent copying of their work, Fran said. Local crafters generally won’t copy one another, but once at the big annual Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in Arizona, she encountered “a whole table of my pieces,” that she did not make.

“Someone had purchased a piece, or taken a photo, and there were 300 of them” that had been made in China, she said.

In 1984 they traveled to China, where Wes was sent under the Fulbright Scholar Program “before China was open” to casual tourists, she said. The two still teach, mostly aboard cruise lines, which feeds their lifelong fancy for travel.

Her next goal is to become part of Celebrity Lines’ art studio program, which invites artists to demonstrate their work during cruises, and offer items for sale.

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“Buy Local” runs on Aloha Fridays. Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.