Our Story

As of native of North Carolina,  I was blessed to grow up on our family farm in a small town community.   My mother came from a large family who were very close and loved to craft together.  As the baby of 5 sisters, they all from an early age learned to craft....crocheting, knitting, painting, many sang in church, played the piano and all loved to cook.  As was passed down from her mother and sisters to her, my Mom taught me at an early age to do these same crafts and have an appreciation for handcrafting, art and music.  

With such a creative family, I have always loved making things.  In the early 80's, I took painting and drawing lessons, then in the mid-90's, I started my jewelry business.  For over 20 years I have been a jewelry maker selling my handcrafted jewelry in various venues from North Carolina to Florida.  

In 2009, my circumstances changed and I went back to work where for the next 8 years.   I was a Real Estate Broker, did Home Staging and Property Management for an exclusive, private residential community in Central Florida. Though this career afforded me a paycheck when I needed it, in 2017 I decided it was time to get back to doing what I love on more of a full time basis then the occasionally weekend events I had been participating in so Beach Treasures by Rita went full speed ahead! 

My dream had always been to live at the beach so in 2014 we bought a little beach house in St. Augustine Beach.  The house was a great weekend retreat for us until we moved full-time in 2017.  We love being able to spend our free time walking the beach and enjoying all that St. Augustine has to offer.  

The last 4 years I was happy building my business, doing lots of festivals and shows to grow my business.  My business hit its best year in 2019 then in early 2020 Covid hit virtually closing my business except for my website sales. 

In 2021, with Covid still a huge concern I decided I needed to put my focus into something new and decided to start painting again and take up watercolor painting.   Painting again truly put the joy back in my life.  I have enjoyed spending this last year practicing and learning new techniques and was also blessed to be commissioned by several people for paintings!  Being given the opportunity to share my art has really made my year!

So here we are in 2022 and we are still hanging in there!  Covid concerns have continued to keep us from doing large events such as, festivals, home & patio shows, art shows, etc. so we are continuing to hope that are online sales will keep us going!  

I'm excited about what the future holds for our small Florida business.  

 Blessings, Rita