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The 2012 Smock Design Contest: Letterpress Plaques for the Honorees

Erica Henriksen — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:30:39 +0000

Our first Smock Design Contest for 2012 was a huge success — we were so excited to recognize the beautiful work that our amazing retailers have sent us over the past few months! Today we are thrilled to share the stunning plaques that the 10 winners of our design contest received — they were created by our talented in-house designer Lindsy Aragona and letterpress printed in Moss and Butter inks on our 2-ply white bamboo paper for a fresh look. The plaques feature elements from our ever-popular Dawson design, and Kelle McCarter hand calligraphed the names of all the winning store names onto the plaques in her Bescal style for a beautiful finishing touch.

Congratulations to all of the stores that were selected as honorees! The next Smock Design Contest will take place later this year – don’t miss it!

Smock + The Wedding Company at the InterContinental Wedding Showcase in Hong Kong

Erica Henriksen — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

We are always amazed at the gorgeous letterpress invitations we get to print for Smock retailer The Wedding Company, but it’s not very often that we get to see an actual event that they put on. The Wedding Company is a full service wedding planning boutique based in Hong Kong, and recently they put on an incredible bridal showcase, complete with romantic décor, elaborate cakes, gorgeous tables and a sweet candy buffet. They even had time to put together an incredible Smock display, and created paper flowers and pinwheels with our double-sided, eco friendly gift wrap for the occasion! We were blown away by the end result — take a look!

Design Contest First Place Winner: Custom Dawson Wedding Invitations from Creative Touch!

Lindsy Aragona — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:00:45 +0000

Nole Garey, editor and publisher of Oh So Beautiful Paper, gave this fantastic invitation set first place in our design contest! Nole loved the texture and the playful yet elegant mix of patterns for this wedding invitation set, and we couldn’t agree more – it’s simply stunning!

Danielle from Creative Touch Party Design in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida always sends us gorgeous designs, and this set is no exception. Much of the inspiration for this design was pulled from Smock’s Dawson suite, sleeve and all. Layers of dynamically designed pieces in this suite really bring it to life, and the colors of pewter and merlot give the playful patterns a little sophistication.

Danielle gave us the scoop on the inspiration behind these invitations. “The wedding colors are shades of wine and berry with silver. The wine color comes from her Lulu Kate bridesmaid dresses, which are just beautiful. These were the inspiration for the border color. The gray picks up the silver throughout the wedding decor. And the men are wearing gray tuxedos, which is reflective in the pocket she chose. The linens are a modern lace pattern which is reminiscent of the quilting in the invitation itself.”

We loved this set — congratulations, Danielle! And a huge thanks to Nole for judging the contest!

This design won first place in our Smock design competition for the first half of 2012. This twice-a-year competition recognizes outstanding and inspired designs submitted by our beloved dealers.

Design Contest 2nd Place Winner: Vintage Love Letter Inspired Invitations

Jenna Tulman — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:00:04 +0000

Our second place design contest winner comes to us from Shelley at /di’zain/ loft limited in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, a recent addition to the Smock family. The couple chose a dreamy color palette of dusty pinks and greys for their wedding, so invitations in pewter and shell inks on our white bamboo paper fit their theme perfectly and created a soft, sweet feel. The invitation design was modeled after a vintage, “fashionably chic” handwritten love letter, which seems perfectly fitting for Clare-Ann and Joshua as they have had to experience the challenges of an overseas relationship. Shell envelope liners and a pretty script font reminiscent of elegant cursive handwriting complete the look of the invitations.

The couple strove for a sense of romanticism with their invitations, and we definitely think they’ve achieved it! We fell in love – and so did our contest judge, Nole, at Oh So Beautiful Paper, who selected the design as the 2nd place winner. She writes, “The invitation has a clean and modern layout, and I love the use of script and serif fonts that keep the design from looking too fussy. Sweet and simple.”

Congratulations Shelley, and best wishes to the happy couple!

Congratulations again to Di’zain Loft Limited for taking 2^nd place in our design contest. This twice-a-year competition recognizes outstanding and inspired designs submitted by our beloved dealers.

Design Contest 3rd Place Winner: Art Deco Architecture at the Lyric Opera Inspires

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:13:03 +0000

For the last week, we’ve been posting the honorable mentions for the Smock Design Contest. Now we’re down to the final three! Our good friend Nole at Oh So Beautiful Paper chose our winners for this competition, and selected Alphagraphics Lyric Opera Invitation as the 3rd place winner. Here’s what Nole had to say about the design: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a corporate invitation that was so pretty! I love the patterns, the font selections, and the fold out layout. Gorgeous.”

Nole, we couldn’t agree more! It’s not often we get to print letterpress invitations for galas, concerts, or charitable events, so when we do, we tend to get pretty excited. This espresso and gold invitation to the Lyric Opera’s Charitable Subscriber Concert and Dinner was extraordinary! It was, indeed, a ticketed concert (which explains the use of the pocketfold), and the invitation invited 100 of the Opera’s premier patrons to dinner and a concert.

To the untrained eye, this striped, monogrammed pocketfold invitation looks beautiful and classy. For those who spend a lot of time at Chicago’s Civic Opera House, they’ll notice graphic elements that remind them of the gilded gold walls and ceilings of that very building. When designing the invitation, Amy at Alphagraphics used the opera’s Art Deco elements and color scheme as her guide. She created an invitation that was reminiscent of the old stately edifice, glamorous in its timelessness.

Her work was well appreciated by all! Both the Lyric Opera and the event’s attendees thought the invitation was a fantastic bidding to a wonderful evening of music and feasting. Bravo Amy, Bravo!

Congratulations again to Alphagraphics for taking 3^rd place in our design contest. This twice-a-year competition recognizes outstanding and inspired designs submitted by our beloved dealers.

Design Contest Winner: Be Lucky in Love with these Offset Save the Dates

Jessica Primavera — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:00:07 +0000

Cori at Social Graces in Nashville, Tennessee sent us this adorable Odin customization! These offset printed save the dates are both personalized and creative, and were printed in a very cool color palette of our sea mist + grass inks. When we asked Cori what inspired this design she told us that the bride was drawn to the fun font style and whimsical frame, and loved how these elements balanced the striped background. The wedding reception will be on her family’s horse farm, so the couple thought it would be appropriate to include a horseshoe. Here at Smock, we believe these save the dates are lucky! Common legend is that keeping the ends of a horseshoe point up keeps all of the good luck in. Congrats to the lucky bride and groom, and bravo to Social Graces for such an inspired design!

inks: sea mist + grass | fonts: mack + louise | paper: 1-ply white bamboo | printing: offset | size: s6

This design won an honorable mention in our Smock design competition for the first half of 2012. This twice-a-year competition recognizes outstanding and inspired designs submitted by our beloved dealers.

Design Contest Winner: Sophisticated & Sweet Bat Mitzvah Invitations

Erica Henriksen — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:00:41 +0000

We have the lovely Jenny from Jenny’s Paper, Ink! to thank for these incredible letterpress Bat Mitzvah invitations that we recently had the pleasure of printing. The invitations have a sweet, youthful look and feature fun fonts and bold colors. Jenny said the inspiration for these Bat Mitzvah invitations began with a custom sleeve – Sari fell in love with the idea of keeping the entire invitation set together without using a typical folio or bellyband. From there, they created a logo that could be used throughout the event by pairing our Louise font with our Dawson cartouche. Next came the patterns and colors — Sari’s favorite color is blue, so robin’s egg was a perfect choice, and adding black as a second ink color gave the invitation a bold look. The Champlain pattern was used in different ways throughout the entire set, and complemented the playful fonts and bold ink combination beautifully. The finished product was amazing and set the tone for a fabulous weekend with family and friends. Congratulations and thank you to Jenny for sending us such a stunning invitation set!

Design Contest Winner: Whimsical Aviation Inspired Invitations

Erica Henriksen — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:55:03 +0000

We featured these stunning letterpress invitations back in October and are thrilled to show them off one more time as a design contest honoree! This sophisticated set was sent to us by Darcy at Pearl Beach Paperie in Orlando, Florida, and features charming vintage airplanes and a rich color combination of cherry and black inks. The swirls and flourished fonts set a whimsical tone which balances the chic gold stripes printed on the folios and envelope liners. Congratulations and thank you to Pearl Beach Paperie for sending us such a lovely invitation set!

Design Contest Winner: Custom Save the Dates from By Invitation Only

Jessica Primavera — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:00:38 +0000

Our fabulous friends at By Invitation Only in Little Rock, Arkansas submitted these custom save the dates to us for printing! We were completely blown away when we saw the end result — we knew these had to be a part of our annual design contest. These save the dates were actually printed for Paige – one of the lovely ladies at By Invitation Only. It was our pleasure to work on save the dates that just overflow with sweetness.

Choosing our smaller card size (S5) is a wonderful way to help keep costs down and with this set, the smaller card really worked – since the back of the card reads small card, big party - and with letterpress on both the front and back these save the dates are so beautifully textured and without a doubt, one of a kind!

Design Contest Winner: Pretty April Showers Invitation

Lindsy Aragona — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Randi, owner of the Printed Page in Atlantic Beach, New York customized a bright and beautiful bridal shower invitation for her daughter, Kelly. We often design small cards for our Smock dealers in order to display our promotions, and the card that we designed for our free envelope printing promotion just so happened to inspire Randi.

Randi had mentioned that the shower would be held in April and would have an “April showers” theme. She explained that the party favors were going to be pink and yellow umbrellas and wanted an elegant invitation to tie everything together. She states, “The inspiration came from one of your designs that reminded me of a modern heart. Since this is a shower invite, I thought it was both feminine and relevant. I bought pink and yellow umbrellas for give away gifts for all of the guests, and I am attaching hang tags with the same design to the umbrellas with ribbon. The tags will be the place cards and the umbrellas will add color and fun to the place card table!”

Randi, congratulations to you and your daughter! These invitations are perfect!