Our Studio By The Sea

Welcome To The By The Sea Jewelry Studio

By The Sea is a FULL TIME professional studio and business now based in North Carolina. We are the oldest sea glass jewelry company online and our sole means of income is from our jewelry business. With over 3.6 Million Dollars in retail sales, we pride ourselves on top quality jewelry, prompt reliable shipping and professional customer service.

From humble beginnings in a spare bedroom, I started as a part time jewelry maker. The business expanded in the mid 90's to full time production. Back then, simple wire wrapping was the only style of jewelry we made and space was not as important. We now occupy over 1500 square feet in total of business space (plus offsite storage in a secure facility).

NEW STUDIO PHOTOS COMING SOON!

The Studio

When we moved we wanted to set up our work spaces to have a professional organized look.

We are a private studio and not open to the public for retail sales. Appointments are available for custom jewelry work and consultations.

 Our Office

The hub and work area of By The Sea Jewelry is the computer since we are mainly an online retailer. This is where orders are invoiced, shipping labels printed and Genuine Certification cards completed for each order.

We are usually online unless we are traveling to the select art shows we participate in each year. We are always happy to talk to our customers about specific pieces, so feel free to call us during business hours.

Completed Inventory

Inventory is kept in boxes according to color and style for easy order processing. Art show jewelry is kept separately. These inventory boxes are near the computer area so if a customer calls or emails with a question about a piece, it is easy to pull and measure or re-photo. We are always happy to answer any additional questions not provided in our online descriptions to help your purchasing decision.

Matching Glass For Earrings

Matching sea glass for earrings can be a daunting and time consuming task which requires space. When sorting glass for earrings we match many many pairs at a time and keep them handy to the work bench.

Special glass is also keep here (in Riker mount boxes) for easy access. It can take many MANY hours of sorting to find earring pair for a dozen earrings.

Here is a video of one of our sorts in white sea glass.

The Jewelers Bench

Our Jewelers bench sits is the central point of the studio, from here, we do all of our creating. Wirework (or wire wrapping), silversmithing and polishing are done at the bench.

The bench holds many of the tools we use on a day to day basis. Additional tools and materials are stored in separate cabinets and bins. Precious metals are kept in a safe, as is some of our rarer sea glass pieces.

Sea Glass Storage

About half of our sea glass is stored in our studio for easy access. By The Sea Jewelry has over $200,000 in sea glass in our inventory, allowing us to offer pieces unavailable anywhere else.

Pictured left is a double decker storage bin used for fast access to colors and some types of glass for making multiple pieces. The open drawers are bubbles in assorted sizes. These are only a fraction of the glass in our inventory.

Locking flat files (right) are used for earring size sea glass , each drawer housing 2 colors of sea glass in flat trays. The top 3 drawers contain 2 colors each. The bottom 2 are bins of select English sea glass in earring size pieces.

We can remove these trays for easy access and transporting to the sorting table. Ultra Rare sea glasses and special pieces such as marbles, bottle tops, an such are also kept in this cabinet.

The closet in our studio houses an overflow of glass in common to rare colors. Pictured right, bins containing bottle glass in blues, lavenders, special greens, various types of non Ultra Rare English glass and pattern glass.

We also store glass according to the location it was found.

This allows us to pull and sort glass at a moments notice. The packing table then becomes a sorting table. When working on multiple sea glass pieces, we easily access all the colors we may need.

Sorting and storing can be endless and we have many types of storing.

Project Bins

Trays of varying degrees of completion let us do multiple pieces in a streamline manner.

These bins allow us to work on different phases of projects at different times. Work is streamlined and multiple pieces are usually completed at the same time, making our hours in the studio more efficient. Some projects like our Limited Edition piece require many MANY hours and weeks of work.

Tools

We are always adding to our tools but I still use the original pliers that I started the business with.

We are constantly adding to our tools, experimenting with new techniques and polishing methods. Most polishing and finishing is done in our "Annex" which is in an open air garage.

The "Sea Glass Annex"

Polishing and Drilling

Most of our heavy duty polishing is done in an open garage area. This area also houses storage for mailing boxes, extra inventory, bulk glass storage and many other items.

Our Vibratory burnishing is also done in this area (due to noise) as is sonic cleaning.

Drilling of sea glass is also done in this area. We use a German watchmaker drill for accuracy and precision.

Final Jewelry Shipping

Each day we take out packages to the post office and fed Ex drop off points. Scan forms are used to track package movement and delivery. You will receive an email with a link so that you can see when your jewelry will arrive.