Last week my husband and I had the opportunity to visit our favorite place on earth (New England!) in celebration of our first wedding anniversary. I thought I’d share a few highlights from our trip – including visits to a handful of amazing Smock dealers! We stayed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire at the Ale House Inn, an independent, locally owned and operated hotel with a commitment to sustainability and eco hospitality practices. Residing in a renovated old warehouse (kind of like Smock!) the hotel features gorgeous rooms boasting a blend of urban and vintage decor and the best hotel staff I’ve ever encountered.

Portsmouth itself is an appropriately named port town with an active and bustling port. It was settled in 1630 with many of the original homes still intact today. There is great food with plenty of options for a vegetarian like me and streets lined with local, independent shops.

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Printing cool stationery is what we love to do. Getting to print cool stationery for cool people? Well, that just sweetens the deal for us. Brought to us by the amazing Byrd + Bleecker in Forth Worth, Texas, we had the extreme pleasure of printing these custom letterpress social notes for Condoleeza Rice. They are printed in mulberry ink and feature corner rounding and edge painting in mulberry. The envelope liner is a coordinating mulberry in our champlain pattern. We love these! They are the perfect blend of sophisticated and formal with the fun of a little unexpected color and pattern. (Our favorite kind of stationery!) Thanks to our friends at Byrd + Bleecker and Condoleeza Rice for the amazing opportunity to work together on these fabulous social notes.

We printed these gorgeous letterpress wedding invitations for a pretty blue and yellow themed wedding – they showcase our Nevis design printed in midnight and navy inks. The envelope boast a colorful patterned liner in our geneva pattern in verbena and the invitations feature our seneca stripe pattern in midnight. This incredible customization was brought to us by our friends at Sugar Paper in Los Angeles.

{Above photos by Smock.}

Ami and Nicholas’s gorgeous wedding was featured a while back on Style Me Pretty, so today we have the pleasure of sharing a few photos from their actual celebration, too! The blue and yellow color palette of their invitations was carried throughout the event with perfectly chosen details to bring the entire look together. Beautiful flowers, pretty linens, and lots of great color and pattern pulled it all together.


See many more photos from Ami and Nicholas’s celebration on Style Me Pretty here and here.

{Above photos by Sweet Monday Photography via Style Me Pretty.}

Eve and Richard were married in January and we’re excited today to share a few photos from their gorgeous Philadelphia wedding, which was photographed by the immensely talented Marie Labbancz. They worked with our friends at The Papery of Philadelphia for their beautiful stationery, using our Nevis design, which we offset printed on our bamboo paper. We love the classic pairing of black ink on ivory paper and the elegant, romantic details Eve and Richard carried throughout their celebration. Check out the Nevis motif on their gorgeous cake!

See more photos of Eve and Richard’s wedding on Marie’s blog.

{Photos by Marie Labbancz.}

In honor of Father’s Day I asked the dad of my children (aka my husband Zach) to share a quick list of his favorite things. Here it is…

You.
The kids.

Campfires.
Kayaking.

Running in the woods.

Boating.
Hanging out with friends.

Belgian beer.
The view at dusk over the lake.

This basically reads as an itinerary of our Father’s Day weekend traditions. Friday night campfire with me and the kids and a Belgian beer (or two). Saturday morning trail run and hop in the kayak (with kids or solo — Dad’s choice). Saturday night boat ride with family and friends and a breathtaking view of the sun setting over the lake. Sunday morning includes breakfast in bed — juice, coffee, a piece of toast with jam, a flower from the garden, hand drawn cards and lots of hugs and ‘I love yous’ and ‘you’re the best dad EVERs’. The rest of the day is step and repeat: kids, run, kayak, beer…..dusk. We always bring some of the chaos into my dad’s life. And family being his favorite thing he can’t resist. And this year Zach’s dad is joining us so we will pull up an extra chair at the campfire and the kids will make some extra cards and toast.

We love these cool letterpress party invitations we recently printed, a sophisticated pairing of midnight and taupe. The front features a modern, minimalist design while the back boasts our roxen pattern – the invitations were then edge painting in metallic silver for the perfect finishing touch. Thank you to our friends at Just Paper & Tea in Washington, DC for bringing us this wonderful design!

With Father’s Day just around the corner, we thought we’d take a moment to introduce you to our very first letterpress Father’s Day card, new for 2010. In muted masculine colors, it’s perfect for the number one father in your life. Nothing says, “I love you, Dad” quite like a great letterpress card.

These letterpress bat mitzvah invitations we printed, our Lashar design printed in verbena and pewter inks, are a fun mix of modern and traditional. We love the bold colors paired with the formal mix of script and roman fonts. The reverse of the invitations feature our inari pattern printed in black for a look that is contemporary and fresh without feeling too youthful.

Now that we’re back from the National Stationery Show, we’ve been sifting through big stacks of business cards and calling cards we collected while in New York. It got us thinking about how many fun letterpress business cards and calling cards we’ve been printing lately so we thought we’d share a handful of our recent favorites. Like a good letterpress wedding invitation, nothing leaves quite the same lasting first impression as a beautifully designed letterpress business card or personalized calling card.

Wow! It’s hard to believe it but the 2010 National Stationery Show has already come and gone – and we had an amazing time! Thank you to all of our friends, old and new, who stopped by to visit us, check out our new products and share your love of paper goods with the Smock team. Getting to spend time with people who love stationery as much as we do is undeniably our favorite part of attending the show! Luckily for us, our friend Missy (the incredibly talented namesake of Missy Photography) paid our booth a visit and shared these gorgeous photos with us so before we spend the weekend getting some much-needed rest, we wanted to share them with you. (Look closely and you’ll see lots of gorgeous new designs coming soon from Smock!) Thanks, Missy!

Our favorite Smock toddler even dropped by for a visit, definitely a highlight of the show for us…

{Photos by Missy Photography.}