Jewelry Mailing Tips

As jewelry artists, we’re fortunate that mailing our work is relatively easy and inexpensive! Most jewelry is small and lightweight enough to fit in a small box or bubble-padded envelope, and sent with minimal postage.

You can send jewelry via First-Class Mail for under $1.00. When shipping jewelry by this method, I package the piece carefully in a ziplock jewelry bag and place it in a cardboard gift box. Then I put the gift box, packing slip, and a business card inside a small bubble mailer. The cardboard gift box and bubble mailer together provide nice protection for the jewelry.

I recommend ordering bubble mailers, tape, and all other mailing supplies from an online supplier. Brick-and-mortar office supply stores charge several times the price you’ll pay for the same supplies you can get from an online supplier. When it finally occurred to me to investigate buying mailing supplies online, I was shocked to find out how much more I was paying per bubble mailer by buying them at an office supply store!

Another good option for mailing jewelry is Priority Mail. This is an economical version of fast shipping — it’s a day or two slower than overnight mail, but much cheaper (currently $3.85 for one pound). Packages sent this way usually arrive from one U.S. destination to another in two to three mail days.

One advantage to using Priority Mail to ship packages is that the Post Office will give you free Priority Mail boxes for shipping! They have a variety of box sizes, from very small (that’s just right for one or two pieces of jewelry packaged in gift boxes) to very large.

I use crumpled newspaper or recycled packaging peanuts or bubble wrap to fill in the empty spaces in these boxes when shipping jewelry. I enclose my packing slip and business card together in a medium-size ziplock jewelry bag so they won’t be thrown away accidentally with my crumpled newspaper!

I use USPS.com or Stamps.com to purchase and print my own postage from my computer, so I don’t have to take my packages to the post office or wait in long lines there anymore. I can just print out a mailing label with postage already on it, attach the label to the box, and mail it from home. I can also insure my jewelry packages this way without filling out extra forms, and delivery confirmation is included, which I appreciate when mailing jewelry.

Your return address on all jewelry-related mail should NOT have any jewelry-related words in it! Putting “Jane’s Jewelry” or “Mike’s Gemstones” on your return address will just make your package a prime target for theft somewhere along the mailing process. Just use your first and last name, as long as it’s something that doesn’t make anyone think your package contains jewelry or gems!

The same thing goes for packages you have shipped to you. Don’t have them shipped to your business name if it has any jewelry-related words in it. Just “Mike Smith” or something that doesn’t give any hint of jewelry!

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