Lisa Van Herik is an outstanding artist who paints and sculpts and luckily for us, is also a master wire worker.  Her sculptural background and metal smith skills meld into distinctive and unique contemporary designs.
" Mia" Fiber and Wire Tutorials
What is more, Lisa teaches jewelry making locally in San Diego. But for those of you far away, she also offers unique tutorials, both free and paid, on her sites called Woven Wire Studio and Beadifferent.  Shown here are some of my favorites. The lucky winner of this gift certificate giveaway gets to pick the tutorials he or she wants!

Bead and Wire Bangle Tutorial
Lisa uses a variety of techniques including braiding, weaving and crochet. One outstanding braided technique is shown in her Faux Silver Bangle design shown below. It is a relatively new one which is very popular with her students. Lisa said, "These bracelets are so fast and look like they took many tedious hours but I can usually do one in about an hour after the setup."

The design is reminiscent of Celtic torques or torcs. You can see a picture of an archaeological one in my past post on Boudicca, the Warrior Queen's Jewelry.  If you'd like to sample the round braiding technique, Lisa has generously provided a basic primer in her free tutorial section.


Faux Silver Bangle Tutorial

Lisa is also a book author. Her Make Wire Beads book covers 44 unique designs. Just how innovative is she?  Well, her sugar cube wire beads tutorial on Youtube, one of the tutorials from the book, really showcases her clever ideas. Yes, real sugar cubes are used as the "forms" which are then dissolved away leaving the wire balls!

Sugar Cube Beads



Lisa has started a delightful and fun website called Unexpected Wire Jewelry Tools.  She shares all her tips on using common office,  kitchen and garage items for making wire jewelry. Who would have thought tapered chopsticks were the best thing for making the wire woven necklace below?  This design is from her eBook, Making Wire Woven Jewelry, available on her sites.


Lisa hopes to travel more to teach later in the year.  Her next workshop is in June and will be on woven sculptural forms of jewelry.  Please do check her website/newsletter for upcoming workshops.

Giveaway
If you'd like to win some of Lisa's awesome tutorials, please make a comment below. Make sure you leave contact info if you do not have an online shop or blog. Also add a comment if you are interested in learning from Lisa via webinars.

Subscribers need to click on the post title to come to my actual blog. Scroll down and enter your comment. Pick Name/URL. If you don't have a store or blog, leave the URL blank. Please leave an email at the very least so I can contact you easily if you win.

This is an international giveaway.

Extra entries if you become or are a blog subscriber or follower oetc . If you also do shout outs about this giveaway,  those will count as additional entries too!  Please say so in the comments.

It ends in a week's time at 6 pm EST Monday, May 14, 2012. I will pick a winner randomly and announce the results as soon as possible after. So be sure to leave a contact email if you don't have an online link or make sure you come back and check! Otherwise I will redraw in a week. Good luck!

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Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
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