Left Hand Laurel-Kate Head

Reading nightmarish news about the Ukraine crisis and doing nothing wasn't working for Kate Head, owner of Pebble Arts Jewelry.

"Like everyone in the world, I was feeling helpless. The news was keeping me awake at night" she said, standing behind the counter of her small shop at the front of Niwot Market. .A kind woman in her early 60s, Head added, "I had to dial it back on news. It's important to be aware, but not to stay awake all night."

So this jewelry designer and long-time Colorado resident, who 9 years ago founded her business, came up with a plan. She and her two employees began designing and selling jewelry made from blue and yellow beads – the colors of the Ukrainian flag. And she is donating 100% of the proceeds from the sales to the refugee relief organization GlobalGive.

"I did a lot of research and found that this non-profit is already on the ground in Poland helping Ukrainian refugees with food, water, and anything else they need," she said. "They have a four-star rating and have done refugee campaigns around the world."

Prices for the jewelry begin at $12 and go up to $26 and so far, in three weeks, Head and her team have raised almost $600. "I thought we'd be lucky if we raised $200. We're excited about the response from our customers. This is our third week, and we'll keep the effort going as long as possible," she said.

Talking together for almost two hours one recent day in her shop, Head told me she also posted her idea about creating blue and yellow beaded earrings, bracelets, and necklaces for Ukrainian relief on an artists' Facebook page she belongs to. The idea went viral, she said, and several other artists around the world are following her example.

Head told me she grew up in the 1960s in a comfortable middle class neighborhood in Detroit. Half the neighbors, like her family, were Irish Catholic. "I grew up in a creative household," she explained. "My Dad was an architect and Mom was a social worker. She was also a painter, and she played the piano."

Though Irish Catholic – Head attended parochial school and can still remember having to wear a uniform – as a little girl, she said, she was hyper-aware of her other non-Catholic neighbors. They were Russian and German Jews, and Head said she can still remember seeing numbers tattooed on their arms and hearing their stories about being imprisoned In the Nazi death camps. It clearly made an impression.

As if on cue, her friend Jeanne Ratzloff entered the store. Ratzloff, also a local resident and retired computer specialist with a government agency in Boulder, became obsessed several years ago with the plight of African refugees in Uganda. Through a bizarre series of events, including connecting with some refugees, she began a non-profit called Peopleweaver (www.peopleweaver.org) to raise funds for the education of women and girls in a refugee camp she has visited many times, a four-hour drive from Kampala, Uganda. Head and Ratzloff, being of like minds in regard to the fate of refugees, started working together several years ago and Head sells African handwoven baskets and jewelry made by the refugee women, and donates the proceeds back to the Peopleweaver non-profit for the education of girls in Africa.

When they started working with the Africans – almost 100% of the refugees in Uganda are from the Congo – the camp had 25,000 people living there. "Now there are 100,000," Ratzloff said, as the three of us stood there shaking our heads in silence.

Head first came to Colorado in 1976 and has been living in Niwot since 1986. "I came to visit friends and never left," she said. While still in Michigan, being raised in a solidly artistic family, she attended art school at the Society of Arts and Crafts and received her degree in industrial design, specializing in the design of furniture.

Much later, after moving to Colorado, around the age of 50, she went back to college and earned a degree in industrial design from Metro State University in Denver. "It was a blast," she said with a smile. "A single girl" all her life, as she describes it, she preferred designing products over doing interior design and for many years before starting her jewelry business in Niwot she worked in lighting design.

Swerving the conversation back to her Ukrainian relief efforts, Head said, "We are running out of blue and yellow beads, and craft stores through the country are lacking goods because of the Covid shut-downs and delays in Chinese ports."

Usually, Head and her designers – Jill Hadley and Pam Tennant –work with gemstones and turquoise (not blue and yellow beads). "And what we are really known for is jewelry made from ancient Roman glass, nine hundred to 1200 years old," she added. "Our product comes from Afghanistan. Our supplier lives in California, but he travels often to the Mideast. Think of something that looks like sea glass," she said, "But it doesn't come from the sea. It dates from 325 BC to the third century, and looks like sea glass, but it comes from the desert."

Kate Head and her team will be celebrating the 9th anniversary of Pebble Art Jewelry this summer. She looks forward post-Covid to returning to her love of travel to gem shows around the United States to buy the stones she and her artist employees use – particularly the gem shows in Tucson which she called with a smile "dangerous to your credit card."

Head is proud of the jewelry she sells, handcrafted by local artists, and remembers fondly starting her business in Niwot nine years ago. It was an experiment. "We rented it for eight weeks as a pop-up store before Christmas. It was an experiment that worked. And we're still here," she said with a laugh.

Not only is Pebble Art Jewelry still in Niwot, but it is having a global reach. Selling jewelry for Ukrainian relief, selling African baskets and jewelry made by refugees in Uganda to

raise money to help educate young girls and women , and serving as a lovely art gallery for hand-made jewelry, it's a Niwot treasure.