How To Find Sea Glass

One of the things I like to do is go hunting for sea glass and interesting stones on the beach, I mainly use the pretty pieces of sea glass to make jewelry (you can see one of my sea glass pendants in the picture to the left).

Lately I have had to really hone my sea glass finding skills. I had read that finding sea glass had become harder and harder, as it takes such a long time for the glass to be formed by the sea. At first I was disbelieving, but I have to admit that lately it has become much less frequent to see it lying around.

You can still find it though it you look in the right places. - Certain types of beach are better for finding sea glass, which I will cover below. But even on the right type of beach, you could be looking in the wrong place and not find any sea glass, so I will also give advice on where to look on each beach.

Do Some Research

The first advice I would give is to do some research, look online and see if there were any old villages or buildings taken by the sea, or erosion. All of the sea glass in my intro pic was picked up in a few hours at this location, which had an old village that was destroyed by the sea.

Also look for busy areas, places where people go and relax by the sea, and also places that have a lot of shipping traffic. Rocky beaches near to ports usually have a lot of sea glass, in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

Materials For Seaglass Hunting:

• Plastic bags or tubs to keep the sea glass in
• Water to keep you hydrated
• A keen eye

1. Sea Glass Hunting on a Shingle Beach

Look along the first line of shingle, nearest to the shore, where it forms a bank. A lot of sea glass will have been washed up here and trapped by the shingle. I like to walk right the way along this bank, and find the majority of sea glass this way.

To find sea glass on a shingle beach, the best time to go is at med/low tide. I always find more sea glass at med tide, when the water is just touching on the first shingle bank from the shore. The sea glass shows up much better when it is wet, especially the lighter colored pieces.

The photo shows pieces I picked up from a shingle beach a few days ago.

2. Rocky Beach

Rocky beaches are great for finding sea glass, the larger rocks trap pebbles, beach glass, and other exciting things. Look amongst the large rocks, in the smaller pebbles and gravel. This will be where the sea glass is hiding.

Beaches like this are best accessed at low tide.

The photo show not just the sea glass I found on a rocky beach, but everything else as well. I even found a china horse! TBH I stopped looking for sea glass as the rocks were hiding so much other 'treasure' too.

3. Sandy Beaches

Sandy beaches are unfortunately not the best places to find sea glass. But it can be found. The places to look are at the shore line, right where the sea is lapping. Look for patches of shells, rock pools, or patches of gravel, this is where sea glass will have become trapped.

Also look along the high tide mark, this is the line of trash and seaweed towards the top of the beach.

What To Do With Sea Glass?

Sea glass can be used for a variety of arts and crafts, I use it in jewelry making as I mentioned before. It is easy to make a piece of sea glass into a pendant using wire wrapping techniques, check out this tutorial on wire wrapping found objects. 

Sea glass can be used for all kinds of crafts and in many home decor projects. I wrote a short blog post on ways to display sea glass here.