Guest Designer: Richard Breaks

Good morning, I hope you all had a great weekend! Today I am very happy to introduce one of my guest designers for "The Vine", Richard Breaks, first gentleman to guest design with one of my sets! Richard's beautiful designs caught my eye (and the attention of a few others I believe!) when he started uploading to StampTV a few months ago, he's made quite a splash as a very talented male cardmaker among the nineteen thousand plus StampTV ladies, and we are every excited to welcome his personality, inspiration, and passion for stamping to our site! He has a wonderful eye for design and made some really gorgeous cards with "The Vine"'s coordinating set "Branching Out" (as well as some amazing cards with "Gifts from the Sea" one of my other favorite nature sets), so I thought his style would be just perfect for showcasing these new stamps.
So many things to love about this elegant card! Richard always includes lots of tiny, carefully chosen details and this one is no exception. The layout is terrific. I love this panel he created for the greeting with large rounded corners and dry embossed pattern above and below. the senitment is wet embossed and really pops on the mooth portion of the paper! He rubbed Memento London Fog ink over the embossing to bring out the detail. Isn't the corner vine beautiful stamped on aqua cardstock? The way he trimmed it leaving a small reveal around the image is easy (less fussy!) to do and looks lovely, and the extra leaves he's added and popped up give the vine a completely different shape. That's something I really like about this set how you can just keep adding individual leaves where you want to create the perfect cascading effect for enhancing your image or sentiment. The satin ribbon and pearls are understated but add shimmer and sophistication. I also like how he chose to wrap the ribbon instead of tying a bow, it lets the leaves take center stage! You've done amazing things with this set already, Richard, can't wait to see more!

You can see Richard's StampTV gallery here. Now please go visit Richard for another sample he created with "The Vine" and be sure to follow his blog "That's Mister Cardmaker to You" (hee!) , I have really been enjoying his posts, he is very thorough and funny as he gives a peek with each new design into his cardmaking process. I will be sharing more projects from Richard next week along with some question and answers.

Have a great day, thanks for visiting! Tomorrow, a guest spot from Miesje Flach, stay tuned!