We can hardly believe it, but it’s true – the 2010 National Stationery Show kicks off later this morning! For those of you attending the show, we’d love to have you come visit us in booth 2241 where we’ll be spreading our love for stylish eco letterpress stationery and paper goods. We’re excited to announce that Smock’s calligrapher, Debi Zeinert of The Blooming Quill, will once again be joining us at the show offering complimentary calligraphy for visitors to our Smock booth. You can catch her from 9am to 6pm today and again from 11am – 2pm tomorrow and 10am to 1pm on Tuesday. Be sure to stop by and say hello!

And just to get you good and excited, here’s a little sneak peek at our booth (and all of our beautiful new products we absolutely adore) from setup yesterday -

It’s hard to believe, but the 2010 National Stationery Show officially opens in just twelve days! We’ve been hard at work preparing for the show – there are so many fun new things to come from Smock this year! Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been mailing out invitations to our favorite retailers and media contacts to visit us at booth 2241 to check out all of the exciting new releases. While we can’t share everything just yet, we did want to give you a little sneak peek at the pretty letterpress printed envelopes that have been arriving in mailboxes nationwide. They feature beautiful hand calligraphy addressing from our dear friend Debi Zeinert of The Blooming Quill. For those attending the show, we’re excited to announce that Debi will once again be in the Smock booth offering hand calligraphy for visitors from 9 to 6  on Sunday, May 16th, and again from 11 to 2 on Monday, and 10 to 1 on Tuesday. We look forward to seeing you there!

Keeping on with our Smock Design Contest honorees, this next design is a custom Haddington letterpress wedding invitation sent to us by Just Paper & Tea in Washington, DC. It was printed in tangerine and a custom bright pink ink with bright pink edge painting and a matching liner in our payette pattern. We love this bold modern take on the classic wedding invitation using our Haddington calligraphy design in bright cheerful ink colors. Paired with edge painting and a patterned envelope liner, it’s a thoroughly modern interpretation of a timeless design.

Thanks so much to our friends at Just Paper & Tea for sending us this amazing creation!

We printed these charming little letterpress escort cards for Write For You in Washington, DC. They’re a customization of our Rhon letterpress invitation design, printed in spring and pewter inks featuring our Smock Spencerian calligraphy font and corner rounding.

These beautiful letterpress place cards are one of our new favorite Smock customizations! Based on our Lashar letterpress wedding invitation design, they feature letterpress printing in gold paired with gorgeous custom hand calligraphy by Smock’s Master Calligrapher, Debi Zeinert of The Blooming Quill.

The bright raspberry ink of the calligraphy coordinates perfectly with the raspberry pattern backing in our Taihu pattern for a look that is truly elegant. What guest wouldn’t love to arrive at an event and see their name displayed in such a luxurious fashion? Add personalized letterpress place cards to our list of must haves!

These letterpress wedding invitations, paired with a custom folio, are truly exceptional, one of those amazing pieces we look forward to printing. The invitation is our Lashar design boasting a very regal gold and eggplant ink color combination with custom calligraphy accents in Clermont paired with our Cooper font in all caps. The folio features our Sottern pattern in gold on the exterior and our Sinclair pattern in eggplant on the interior. The envelope liner is just as pretty, showcasing our ever popular Seneca Stripe pattern in gold for a complete package that is nothing short of extraordinary. Wouldn’t you just love to have one of these beautiful creations land in your mail box?

Thank you to Inklinations in Manhasset, NY for sending us this beautiful wedding invitation customization!

Here at Smock we’re true believers that there is no better way to set the tone for your wedding than with incredible letterpress save the dates. These lovely save the dates, our Rhon design, are no exception. Brought to us by our friends at The Write Image in Salt Lake City, they feature taupe and tangerine inks in a horizontal orientation that makes for a design that is both really fun and totally chic. These letterpress save the dates also showcase one of Smock’s two calligraphy fonts, Smock Spencerian, in a petite reply card size for a truly special and unique way to kick off a wedding celebration. We love it!

Here at Smock we get to work with some pretty cool people throwing some amazing parties, which we absolutely love. In fact we find it so much fun that we want to share those parties with everyone else! If you’re hosting a great brunch, baby or bridal shower, birthday party, anniversary celebration, or a fabulous spring kick-off barbecue, we want details! Email us at hello@smockpaper.com and tell us about your event and you could be featured on Smock’s blog. Parties of all shapes, sizes, and themes are welcome! In the meantime, check out this fabulous baby shower at the incredible Thoughtful Day, a blog we positively adore.

We love this use of our adorable Liony letterpress invitations featuring hand calligraphy by our favorite calligrapher, Debi Zeinert of Blooming Quill, in Whimsy for a first birthday party. It’s simple and oh so sweet, and the perfect way to set the stage for a fantastic birthday celebration.

One of the things we most love about our Smock letterpress wedding invitations is the complete versatility in design. By selecting the patterns, envelope linings and ink colors of choice, a bride or groom can dream up a totally new version of a Smock design that is unique to their personality and their event. Lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of gorgeous adaptations of the lovely Vettore design and wanted to share one that we find particularly fun. The original Vettore design is printed in midnight and sea mist ink for a pretty, classic look.

In this Vettore customization, the couple chose mango and clover inks for a look that is much more modern and bold. By using calligraphy accents the design remains a bit traditional and yet completely updated.

The bold mango patterned backing in our Willoughby pattern is an exciting and unexpected touch when guests open the envelope, which is beautifully lined in clover Willoughby.

We adore this version of Vettore, customized by RSVP Studio in Toronto and their client, for its fun and festive nature. It’s somehow strikingly bold and quietly tradtional all at the same time and we couldn’t love it more.

We’re all for color this season, but we absolutely fell in love with this letterpress wedding invitation design that celebrates all that is good and beautiful about neutrals. This invitation is based on our Haddington design — the invitation is letterpressed in espresso ink with an elegant blind deboss palm tree at the top. All of our pocket folios are custom, so we can add whatever patterns & ink colors you’d like to the folio exterior and interior. With this invitation, we left the the folio exterior unprinted, which means the focus is all about the warmth of the bamboo paper. The interior of the folio features the champlain pattern in a gentle sand ink. Pair that with a lined envelope that mirrors the interior of the folio (champlain pattern, sand ink) — and you have an invitation that is pure sophisticated pleasure and harmony. Sent to us by our ever creative friends at JAM/Mindy Weiss in Los Angeles.