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Influencer Spends Hours a Day Creating Sand Castles on the Beach. Then, She Destroys Them (Exclusive)
Janel Hawkins runs the sand sculpting company, Sand Castle University, where she designs intricate beachside creationsNEED TO KNOW
Janel Hawkins is the founder and owner of Sand Castle University, a sand sculpture business based in Gulf Shores, Ala.
The team's creations can take anywhere from five hours to three days to build, but they must be destroyed after, as a result of sea turtle protection laws in the area
The company's beach creations have gone viral on TikTok, where they now have over 1 million followersWhen Janel Hawkins was a freshman in college, an ad on Craigslist with an unusual listing caught her attention.
'Sand sculpting apprentice, no experience necessary,' the post she wasn't majoring in anything remotely related to art or architecture — in fact, she was studying business and psychology at the time — Hawkins remembered feeling called to check the listing out.'I was broke, as most college kids are, and needed a job,' Hawkins tells PEOPLE. 'I was like, 'This is crazy, like, there's no way.' "She applied anyway and ended up at tryouts for the role. She was picked, and spent the next three years studying under a master sand sculptor, learning the ropes and traveling throughout Florida, where she was in college at the time, building sand sculptures and learning the ins and outs of the started as a side hustle in college for Hawkins to hopefully make a little extra cash has since blossomed into a full-blown business. In 2017, with just a year left before graduating, Hawkins dropped out of college and returned home to Gulf Shores, Ala., to start her own business — cheekily named Sand Castle University.
'When I was three years in, I was going into my last year of school realizing that I wasn't going to do anything with my degree,' Hawkins explains. 'I just knew I didn't want a typical '9 to 5' and I didn't want to work for someone else.'In the early years, she juggled two other jobs while figuring out how to run a business as a 22-year-old.'I was definitely 'faking it until I make it,' " she says.
Then, in 2020, while the rest of the world remained locked down as the spread of COVID-19 intensified, Hawkins found her business blowing up.'Alabama was closed for two weeks, and then whenever we opened back up, our sand castle classes were one of the approved activities because they're private classes and they're outdoor,' Hawkins explains. 'So we blew up. It was the busiest I had ever been. I had never, never seen money like that before.'
From there, Hawkins quit her other jobs and hired full-time staff for Sand Castle University. Staying true to how she got her start, Hawkins doesn't hire traditionally trained artists for her instructing staff at Sand Castle she prefers to hire 'people people.''Two of our veteran instructors, Katie and Caitlin, were just skipping along the boardwalk, while I was doing a sculpture," she shares. "They were like 'Oh my goodness, we love your sand sculpture.' They had the guts to walk up to someone randomly and just start talking to them.
Hawkins adds, "The kind of people that are really outgoing and engaging are the kind of people I'm interested in hiring.'
Today, Sand Castle University is based in Gulf Shores and is a completely mobile business that offers a variety of different services to customers, including custom sculptures and consultations for everything from brand marketing activations to proposals to private sand sculpture building lessons. The company has collaborated with major brands like Toyota, Disney and La Roche-Posay.
And thanks to social media like TikTok, where @sand_castle_university has 1.1 million followers, the business has recently been transformed in more unexpected ways. As of 2025, Hawkins says that social media has officially become the business's main source of income, surpassing both classes and commissions.
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'People pay us to build sand sculptures, but then the other part of it is that they want a video of us building them,' Hawkins says. To meet the demand, she taught herself how to shoot and edit content, keeping all of their content creation in-house.
Recently, Hawkins began experimenting with different kinds of videos to see what draws attention. Unsurprisingly, the ones that go viral most often are the ones that begin with her destroying her own work. 'It's kind of a grab,' she says.
The smashing isn't just for show. Between May 1 and October 31, it's sea turtle nesting season on the Alabama Gulf Coast. 'By law, we have to dismantle our sculptures at the end of the day unless they're part of a permitted, roped-off event,' Hawkins explains.
'It's cathartic. It's happened a few times where I've seen a family walking up and I'll wait a few minutes so they can get their photos. Sometimes people don't realize it's my sculpture; I have to be like, 'Read my shirt. I'm actually supposed to do this.' "
Despite the obvious effort that goes into the creations on TikTok (anywhere from five to eight hours to three days, she says), over time Hawkins has come to appreciate the impermanence of it all.'Social media has helped spread the awareness that art doesn't have to be forever. Obviously, we have a very temporary art form, right? We have the attitude that just because it doesn't last forever doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing. And I think that that's just really kind of poetic,' she is still permanent about her job, however? The sand that never quite seems to disappear from her car no matter how often she cleans it out.
But, despite the transitory nature of her medium, Hawkins takes her craft seriously. She's developed her own style by drawing inspiration from architecture. After her home was hit by a hurricane in 2020, she became obsessed with design and began sculpting houses instead of traditional castles.
'Someone once told me no one would ever pay me to make houses out of sand,' she says. 'Then La Roche-Posay came to us and they said, 'Hey can you make this version of our French spa out of sand?' That was a moment for me of being like, 'Oh, people will pay.' "She's also known for her unconventional toolkit. 'None of my tools are meant for sand sculpting,' Hawkins reveals.
Among the items she uses are masonry tools, construction tools, potters tools and even things like synthetic feather dusters (pro tip: for sand castle building, synthetic feather dusters are better than natural because they don't suck up as much water).
Now that Hawkins has a team of sculptures and instructors to rely on, she has time to focus on what's next. She's dreaming of more ambitious, long-term projects—like sculpting every house on Gulf Shores' West Beach to line up into a sand replica neighborhood.
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'It would take forever,' she says. 'I also want to make a full living room set — couch, coffee table, the works — entirely out of sand.'
As for the future of Sand Castle University, she's already planning the next phases: a master class for returning students.
'A lot of people come and take our classes every year, and I want to give them something new," she shares. "Not only is that challenging for them but a cool challenge for me to be able to create that class.'
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