Teen raises money for Palatine pet shelter
It's always refreshing to run across a local student who spends some of their spare time involved in a charitable activity.
Lizzie Ferrazza of Arlington Heights stopped by Barb's Precious Rescue and Adoption Center in Palatine to drop off a donation of $200, proceeds from some of her recent jewelry sales.
Ferrazza has been making beaded jewelry for the past year and selling her creations at several locations, including the Arlington Cat Clinic, Arlington Heights Promenade of Art and Bentley's Block Party. She has then been donating the net proceeds to local, no-kill pet shelters in the area.
This is her ninth such donation in the past year. She has donated $2,680 to date. In addition to Barb's, other recipients include The Buddy Foundation, Pets Are Worth Saving (PAWS), Chicagoland Lab Rescue, Second City Canine Rescue, Mady's Way, Kay's Animal Shelter, Young at Heart and Animal House Shelter.
Last year, Ferrazza created "Lend Me Your Ears," a nonprofit organization devoted to saving the lives of dogs and cats by supporting no-kill animal shelters. By upcycling old jewelry into new creations, Lend Me Your Ears takes profits from sales and supports no-kill animal shelters.
Ferrazza started by upcycling broken costume jewelry into earrings. She bought the posts and hooks new from Jo Ann fabrics and made earrings. Ferrazza and her mom spent a lot of time at garage sales and at the Salvation Army looking for affordable jewelry last summer.
In the spring, a Girl Scout troop asked her to do a jewelry demonstration, and instead of making earrings, she had everyone make themselves a bracelet, because some girls did not have pierced ears.
The Girl Scouts donated the remainder of the demonstration supplies to Ferrazza. With beads that were too small for earrings, she decided to keep making bracelets.
The shape of the beads - small dots and dashes - reminded her of morse code and she stumbled upon the idea of making message bracelets.
She played around with some phrases and now sells a few versions of the bracelets: "happiness," "share kindness," "laugh often," live, laugh, love," and has even made custom bracelets. All of the bracelets and earrings are sold for $10 each.
You can visit Ferrazza's website at www.lendmeyourears.net and a Facebook site she runs with the help of her dad, lend-me-your-ears-jewelry.
Barb's Precious Rescue and Adoption Center, 313 N. Quentin Ave., Palatine, is a 501(C) 3 charity and a no-kill shelter. Adoption hours are 6:30-8:30 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays and 9 a.m.-noon Saturdays.
In its first year of operation, the adoption center has found forever homes for nearly 125 cats. For details, visit www.barbspreciousrescue.org or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/barbsrescue.
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