Unlock Your Heart

Jody Young tells the story of how she replaced fear with faith to discover her passion, find inspiration, and believe in the power of her artistry. In the last 30 years, Jody has mastered her craft but continues to learn as she inspires and teaches others how to move, and be moved, through beadwork.

In Part 1 of the "Unlock Your Heart" bead embroidery series, Jody shares the basics of seed bead embroidery—beginning with a couching-style stitch to show how to beautifully bead around a cabochon or focal bead. Her first piece of advice is to listen to the beads because they'll tell you what to do.

In Part 2, Jody demonstrates how to add texture and accents to bead embroidery, using a couching stitch to embellish around a beaded cabochon or focal bead with cupchain and a variety of beads.

Part 3 of Jody's bead embroidery series follows up the addition of texture and accents with this walkthrough for creating a peyote stitch bezel to add depth and complexity to a simple jewelry component.

In Part 4, Jody shares her favorite stitch for adding three-dimensionality to bead embroidery: the caterpillar stitch. Follow along as Jody beads a bumpy caterpillar-like circle using cup chain, Crystal Passions® pearls and seed beads.

In Part 5, Jody shows how to turn this bead embroidery piece into a brooch with these finishing techniques: attaching a pinback, sewing on a backing, completing the edges with picot stitch and adding fringe.

Part 6 of Jody's "Unlock Your Heart" bead embroidery series showcases how to use the previous stitches and techniques to create larger, interlaced circular shapes. Then she finishes off this larger component with fringe-like accents for even more visual texture.

In Part 7, Jody builds on the ideas and pieces created in Part 6 and shows how to assemble the smaller components into a collar necklace. Jody's asymmetrical creation uses Sherri Serafini's collar template on Lacy's Stiff Stuff as a backdrop. Jody's #1 rule? Don’t be afraid to play!

In this final video of her "Unlock Your Heart" bead embroidery series, Jody brings together all the different levels of complexity in this video series. Jody walks you through three finishing techniques for turning your bead embroidery components into bracelets, necklace pendants and brooches. "Just remember to listen to the beads," Jody says, "they'll tell you what to do."