New England portrait and wedding photographer Brea McDonald recently planned a baby shower for her good friend, Amber. Hosted at The Blue Elephant in Saco, Maine, she pulled together a beautiful garden-inspired event using her collection of vintage table linens and a bunch of sweet DIY touches. The coolest part? The sweet DIY paper pinwheels she crafted using Smock gift wrap that she purchased at Gus & Ruby Letterpress, one of our beloved Smock dealers. We love this idea! Our gift wraps all feature colorful double-sided patterns printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper. It’s always a treat for us to see the unique ways people put our recycled wrapping paper to work, but these paper pinwheels are definitely one of our favorites!

To read more about this pretty baby shower, visit Brea’s blog.

{Photos by Brea McDonald.}

When thinking up fun ways to use our eco gift wrap this holiday season, we dug deep into our craft drawers at home to find cute bows, ribbon and tulle. We used the wrap to stuff gift bags, crafted it into ribbon and curly bows and played with the double-sided patterns to create pretty stacks of presents all tied up with cute embellishments. At Smock, we’re the type of folks who adore a pretty package anytime of the year, but it’s especially fun at the holidays to gussy up packages for giving to loved ones. All of our gift wraps feature double-sided patterns printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper and come in over-sized sheets that are 24″ x 36″ – each roll comes with two sheets.

Smock’s Market wrap topped with a big yellow bow.

Smock’s pretty pink Plume wrap and Chiffon wrap tied up in a cute stack with iridescent ribbon.

Smock’s Liony blue and green gift wrap paired with salvaged fabric ribbon we had lying around from an old craft project.

Smock’s Julep gift wrap with a tuft of bright blue tulle on top.

This package is all wrapped up in pretty recycled kraft paper and features Smock’s Liony gift wrap as both ribbon and curly bow.

For those gifts better off rolled, we used our Savoy gift wrap to form a pretty patterned tube and then finished it off with white tulle.

No time to wrap? Here we used our Savoy and Ceylon gift wraps as stuffing for gift bags.

Smock’s Tissot gift wrap tied up with pretty purple and lavender ribbons in a basket weave pattern.

Our philosophy at Smock is that gifts don’t have to be lavish to be extraordinary. Even the simplest of gifts can leave a lasting impression when you get creative with great gift wrap and the perfect little letterpress card or gift tag. Still on the hunt for great gift ideas? We’ll be rounding up a few of our favorites next week for those of you who – like us – still have a long list of gifts to buy. Don’t miss it!

Working with incredible retailers across the country and internationally is, hands down, the best part about what we do at Smock. They keep us inspired and energized and looking forward to creating imaginative, sustainably printed letterpress for customers worldwide. One store in particular that continues to amaze us is Urbanic Paper Boutique and their fabulous blog Parcel Post, where owner Audrey Woollen routinely feature a glimpse into life at Urbanic and the great paper products they carry. We’re always delighted when Smock products pop up in their weekly Friday at the Shop feature and have found ourselves continually loving the great photos they’ve taken of our 100% post consumer recycled gift wrap.

All of our gift wraps are double-sided, printed with bright festive patterns that coordinate with many of our letterpress greeting cards and letterpress gift tags. Later this week, we’ll be featuring Urbanic in our Smock Store Spotlight feature so be sure to stop back for all the behind the scenes details of one of our favorite paper shops!

{Photos by Urbanic for Parcel Post.}

With the holidays swiftly approaching, we were recently contacted by two of our fabulous Smock retailers about contributing some Smock goodies for holiday events being hosted at their stores. Naturally, we couldn’t resist getting in on the holiday action. At Smock, we believe in giving back at the holidays and throughout the year so we were excited for the opportunity to help our stores out this holiday season.

We sent these little bundles, featuring a few of our letterpress holiday cards and letterpress gift tags, to our friends at Salutations in North Carolina where they were hosting a holiday open house at each of their stores in Charlotte and Chapel Hill. Guests to the event had to bring non-perishable food items to donate to the local food pantry in order to gain admittance to the event. We’re delighted to have been a part of such a fabulous event!

We also happily sent some of our double-sided 100% post consumer recycled gift wrap and letterpress gift tags to Broadway Paper in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Broadway Paper’s holiday open house is being held this Saturday, November 14th – you can visit their website and the Broadway Paper blog for more details if you’re in Wisconsin and would like to attend.

What are you doing to get in the holiday spirit? We’d love to hear about the fabulous events you’re hosting or attending this holiday season!

We were clicking around Etsy this morning, and happened upon this incredible handmade notebook and instantly fell in love. And, really, how would we not love it? Made by Etsy seller RedOtter, this notebook features Smock’s double-sided 100% post consumer recycled gift wrap and it’s absolutely beautiful! Thanks so much to RedOtter for choosing Smock paper for one of your lovely journals and for making us smile today!

{Photos by RedOtter}

Smock is in the news! In the Washington Post: Laura Weatherly, founder of Engaging Affairs, a Washington D.C. wedding planning company, named Smock as one of her favorite eco-friendly invitation lines. The Washington Post calls Smock a way to “save the date (and the planet)”. Read the full article here.
The Ladies Home Journal featured Smock’s 100% post-consumer recycled gift wrap (the Veranda design) as a way to organize your life. You can use our gift wrap to wrap gifts of course, or cover wooden magazine holders with our gift wrap patterns. Cool idea!

Also, Daily Candy describes Smock as “adorable letterpress greeting cards and invites printed on sustainable bamboo paper” in the Weekend Guide of Daily Candy.

Receive free gift wrapping (with our 100% post-consumer recycled gift wrap) + a free cute matching gift card with your message handwritten inside. All you need to do is purchase $25 from smockpaper.com and then plant a tree during checkout ($1 donation to American Forests). Smock, by the way, always matches tree donations, so if you plant a tree, we’ll plant a tree too. This promotion begins now and goes until Dec. 25. Here are some autumn photos to get you in the mood, taken at our local neighborhood park one frosty morning when the light was lovely and bright and the trees were all aflame.

Check out our eco-friendly 2008 letterpress holiday cards, all printed sustainably on our bamboo paper. We also have letterpress holiday gift tags, fill-in party invites, and some cute holiday-themed social notes. If you’re in the holiday mood, you might want to check out our other gift tags & matching gift wrap as well….we can’t believe it’s almost that time of year again either, though the Syracuse area did receive it’s first snow dusting today (!). Now that all the leaves have turned their colors and fallen down, we’re actually looking forward to seeing everything in a blanket of pretty white.