For those of you in warmer climates, it may still feel like summer in your neck of the woods, but here in Upstate NY fall has arrived and shows no plans of leaving. Which, of course, gets us thinking about falling leaves, fresh apple cider and all of the pretty custom letterpress holiday cards we will soon be printing. Believe it or not, it’s never too early to start planning for your holiday cards, which is why we’ve sent all of our Smock dealers a ton of fresh inspiration for beautiful custom letterpress holiday cards sure to wow your friends and family.

Our new calligraphy fonts and ink colors are perfect for the holidays! Mix and match them with your favorite embellishments (patterned backing, envelope liners, edge painting, calligraphy accents, monograms, corner rounding + more) for a truly custom and unique look.

We love the combination of letterpress and a great family photo! These letterpress holiday cards hold a wallet sized photo that your family and friends are sure to treasure.

We also love holiday cards in our new square shape! This size is perfect for the holidays, cute save the dates, baby announcements and so much more.

With tons of embellishment, ink color, font and motif choices from our Social Occasions album, the possibilities are endless! For all of the latest holiday inspiration from Smock, visit your local Smock dealer and check out more great custom letterpress holiday cards previously featured on our blog.

Today we’re excited to share the first of our ten honorees in our recent Smock Design Contest! These letterpress baby announcements were a very special project for us, one we got to work on directly with the new mom herself – Kelley Beirne Stephens, owner of Houston Invitation Service. (Talk about exciting!)

Kelley shares, ” Being the owner of a stationery boutique, I knew I wanted to do a truly special announcement for our first baby. That meant using Smock for sure! We didn’t find out the sex of the baby ahead of time so I sketched out both boy and girl designs. As soon as our little girl made her debut, I took out my draft and made a few revisions…the main one was to ‘girl it up’ and change the paper color to the soft pink so that her name would take on a softer, more tone-on-tone quality. I had our calligrapher pen her name, monogram, and a few items to punctuate the text. I then set up a draft and sent it on to the pros at Smock. The monogram liner was a last minute decision and I think it really completed the look. We are so pleased with the result and have had such great feedback from recipients, too!”

These pretty letterpress baby announcements were printed in dove and blush inks on our pearl paper with silver edge painting and corner rounding to ensure no detail was left forgotten. They feature pattern backing in our sherbrooke pattern in blush and the envelope liner features a custom monogram in blush. They are feminine, girly and perfect for welcoming a new baby girl. Congratulations to Kelley and Steve on welcoming the new addition to their family and on being a winner in our Smock Design Contest!

Niki Kantor Rubin, proprietress of Papery & Cakery in Boca Raton, Florida brings a unique background to her unique business, a stationery and patisserie boutique. With an educational background in history and a law degree from George Washington University, Niki began her career clerking for a criminal judge. From the beginning, her law practice failed to be completely satisfying and she had never shaken her lifelong passion for design, art and creating. Then a few years ago she starting planning her wedding to her “camp sweetheart” – they met while both working as counselors at a summer camp nearly a decade ago – and realized how much she loved planning all of the stationery and paper details that they incorporated in their celebration. Along the way, she met the owner of the stationery store that is now Papery & Cakery – one thing led to another and when Niki was offered the opportunity to buy the store she did so. And she never looked back.

These days, Niki loves working with clients to create the stationery of their dreams. Unlike her days in law practice, she’s now inspired by what she does and feels lucky to help people celebrate the special occasions in their lives. Niki shares, “I’m inspired by everything around me. Florida weather is truly amazing. We live near the ocean and walk our golden retriever [and Papery & Cakery mascot], Ray, to the beach almost daily.  I try to carry environmentally friendly vendors, like Smock for all of my clients. I’m a magazine junkie, and get butterflies when Martha Stewart arrives in the mail. There is so much to see on the web, I try to keep up with the blogging world, and keep my blog contemporary and chic.”

We’ve mentioned it before, but in addition to all things paper and letterpress, here at Smock we have a pretty deeply rooted love for yummy treats, too. The Papery & Cakery blog is one of our favorite reads because it celebrates two of our favorite things – stationery and delicious sweets. Each week, Niki’s sister Ali, who was a pastry student when Niki launched Papery & Cakery and is now a freelance baker in New York City, shares her inspired recipes in her Cakery Friday feature. Last week, she showcased her recipe for festive pumpkin spice marshmallows, which Ali and Niki were sweet enough to share here on the Smock blog…

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Brought to us by our friends at Alphagraphics in Chicago, the first runner-up in our Smock Design Contest is this truly customized letterpress social note in our Lashar design. It features fabulous edge painting, pattern backing and a gorgeous lined envelope for a look that is totally luxe and completely personalized. Letterpress printed in red and pool inks, the card itself showcases gorgeous red patterned backing in our champlain pattern. It’s edge painted in espresso and then paired with an envelope lined in our payette pattern in espresso ink. This is truly a piece where every detail was considered – the front of the card even features beautiful hand calligraphy in red ink. Smock’s Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler, fell in love with this customization for it’s unique play between pattern and color. We’d love to be the recipients of one of these amazingly beautiful letterpress correspondence cards!

Thank you to Alphagraphics for sending us such a truly unique creation!

This next runner up in our Smock Design Contest is a true customization, blending all of the beauty of both our Nevis and Vettore letterpress invitation designs into one incredible invitation suite. Brought to us by our friends at Arabesque in Naples, Florida, this customization was a true pleasure for us to print. With an exciting mixing and matching of colors, patterns and designs, this set is truly unique and exudes an undeniable elegance.

The letterpress invitation itself is our Vettore design, printed in soft lake and midnight inks. The design was shifted to have a vertical orientation and the couple opted for pattern backing in our willoughby pattern in lake. With corner rounding and gold edge painting, every detail was thoughtfully considered. The result? An absolute show-stopping letterpress invitation that we completely love.

Switching it up, the letterpress reception card is in our Nevis design in the same midnight and lake inks, with pattern backing in our seneca pattern. The same corner rounding and gold edge painting make this card just as classically chic as the invitation itself.

The letterpress reply card is once again in our Vettore design, paired with an envelope liner in our seneca pattern printed in lake to match the pattern backing of the letterpress reception card. The careful pairing of colors and patterns helps this invitation set shine, a truly beautiful and unique reflection of the couple and their wedding.

Thank you so very much to the folks at Arabesque for the privilege to print such an incredible customization. Congratulations on being one of our Smock Design Contest winners!

It may go without saying, but around here we are absolutely in love with letterpress business cards – they have become one of our favorite things to print! Letterpress business cards make a lasting first impression, so we’re always excited to design and print them. These particular cards are among our favorites of those we’ve recently printed. Completely custom, featuring the logo of one of our favorite wedding and lifestyle blogs, Elizabeth Anne Designs, these were printed for publisher Ami Price. They are on beautiful 2-ply bamboo paper in 1-color letterpress in classic black ink, paired with edge painting in our wisteria ink that adds just a touch of whimsy. These cards pay homage to classic calling cards, while still being a bit unexpected and fresh. Ami chose a slightly scaled down size that makes them truly unique and one of a kind. We love them!

At Smock we are no strangers to printing incredible customizations of our letterpress wedding invitations brought to us by the great stores we work with, but recently we’ve also been lucky enough to print some fabulous customized invitations for a wide range of other occasions. We love the idea of adpating a wedding invitation design for other events because really, letterpress is gorgeous for any celebration, isn’t it?

This version of our Kurai design, brought to us by RSVP Today in New York City, is updated in papaya and silver inks and includes Hebrew text for a result that is youthful and elegant. We love how a simple pop of bright color, along with our Beaumont serif font, changes the look of the design so dramatically and makes it so perfect for inviting loved ones to celebrate a Bat Mitzvah.

We love this take on the original Helani letterpress design customized as a perfectly adorable baby announcement, a variation on the Helani reception card for a client of Kustom Kreations in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Printed in clover and lake inks, with the addition of the very sweet Etienne script font, it’s bright and fresh and the perfect way to celebrate the birth of a beloved little one.

Printed for Luxe Expressions in Atlanta, this invitation is for a bridal showcase hosted by The Atlantan Brides, and boasts bright raspberry and pewter inks with tangerine edge painting in a custom design based on Helani. The cheerful envelope liner is our Oesa pattern in fun tangerine ink and together it makes for a truly festive invitation. We love this use of a bold and bright letterpress design for a coporate event.

Sweetly printed on our Ellie note card from Smock’s social line, this baby shower invitation is truly adorable. We can think of no better way to invite guests to celebrate the upcoming birth of a new loved one.

This version of Nevis was printed in lake and midnight inks for a farewell brunch and features edge painting in gold, which we absolutely love. Printed at our Save the Date size, the invitation is perfect for inviting loved ones to celebrate good food and good cheer and was brought to us by Arabesque of Naples in Naples, Florida.

We’re still feeling the (letterpress) holiday spirit here at Smock…thanks in part to all the great custom holiday cards we’ve had on our presses lately. This was an elegant, cool & fun holiday design that we printed recently, based on our Nevis wedding invitation . What a creative customization….red and black letterpress inks, red edge painting (wow! it really stands out against the black), the seneca stripes pattern in black for a backing, and the sottern envelope liner in black. The mix of patterns & the accents of red create such a good energy. This custom holiday card came to us from Events in Houston.

We are obsessed with hand edge painting (or edging) over here at Smock. Black letterpress ink, white bamboo paper, and pure blue edge painting — it’s what we dream about! We think edge painting is going to be a big trend for this upcoming wedding season — for good reason too. It’s such a elegant, classical, but cool way to add color to your letterpress wedding invitations. Also big for the upcoming wedding season: calligraphy (or calligraphy accurate fonts, like our only-available-at-Smock Spencerian font used here). Pictured below are additional letterpress pieces from our Haddington wedding invitation suite: save the dates, menus, and a letterpress wedding program cover, all printed in a rich black letterpress ink.