JERSEY CITY — When Brittany Graziosi gets a package delivered to her family's home, her mom texts her, "Do I need to put this in the freezer?"

See, boxes addressed to Graziosi, who makes jewelry with parts of formerly living things, usually contain a dead animal. Or two.

"Right now I've got guinea pigs, a python, two rabbits and a couple of geckos," she told The Jersey Journal. "I take whatever I can get."

In the last eight years, Graziosi, 28, has turned her jewelry-making hobby into a growing enterprise. She won a cash award from an entrepreneurial group last year and tomorrow the market she runs is hosting its second annual Valentine's Day event.

Her stature may be rising, but she still feels like the Fulton Avenue girl making weird stuff in her basement.

"Whenever people say, we're going to interview you, I'm like, why?" she said.

She grew up a "weird kid" living in the city's Greenville section. She loved science and nature but not paying attention in class. Her first real job was for a marketing company, teaching retail workers how to sell products. She hated it and was fired.

She started making her own jewelry, selling it at a Downtown market and on Etsy and tending bar to pay the bills (she has a four-year-old son). In 2010, she said, "someone gave me deer vertebrae from, like, the '90s that he found on train tracks in Roxbury." Her line of jewelry made from animal parts was born: earrings with cat teeth, talons hanging from necklaces, buttons covered in butterfly wings, all made in a cluttered half of a basement laundry room.

Her family's reaction to Graziosi's new obsession with dead things? Disgust but not shock, she said.

This all may have remained a glorified hobby, but Graziosi stunned herself by beating out other budding entrepreneurs to win the 2017 Start Something Challenge sponsored by local nonprofit Rising Tide Capital.

Graziosi, center, accepting her Start Something Challenge prize with second-place winner Djenaba Johnson-Jones, left, and third-place winner Aeisha Phillips.

Entrants submitted videos pitching their ideas, then promoted the videos to build an audience. Two rounds of online voting led to 10 finalists, who made their pitches live in August in front of a panel of experts.

Graziosi's initial idea was an online shop called Hudson Trading Company, but at the last minute she pitched Jersey City Oddities Market, a pop-up fair she began after she struggled to nab spots at more traditional bazaars. She thought the Hudson Trading pitch would be "more digestible" for the judges but, assuming she'd lose anyway, went with her dead-animal-jewelry-and-taxidermy fair instead. She won the grand prize, $10,000.

"Which is crazy," Graziosi said. "In my speech I said, 'Greenville, stand up.'"

Graziosi has partnered with Liberty Science Center for its "after dark" series and worked with the volunteer group that runs the Harsimus cemetery. Fourth Street Arts and Rock-It Docket are among the market's supporters.

Rising Tide spokeswoman Esther Fraser called Graziosi "fantastic."

"I saw Brittany's pitch twice. I thought to myself, yeah, she's going to do really, really well," Fraser said. "She's authentic. She knows who she is."

Jersey City Oddities Market returns to Cathedral Hall, 380 Montgomery St., tomorrow from noon to 8 p.m.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.