Here at Smock, we’re always searching for new ideas and ways to improve our eco practices and to build great new partnerships. Smock’s parent company, Boxcar Press, recently teamed up with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as an EPA Green Power Partner, a program designed to encourage organizations to seek out renewable energy sources and to reduce carbon emissions. Together, Smock and Boxcar are 100% wind powered through NativeEnergy, a truly inspiring organization that allows businesses and individuals to purchase carbon offsets and renewable energy credits. NativeEnergy actively works to promote Native American, family farm, and community-based renewable energy projects to help make renewable energy more accessible. It’s a true pleasure for us to be working with the EPA and NativeEnergy to help promote renewable energy and we look forward to seeing an increasing number of businesses getting involved in the future.
This upcoming week at the National Stationery Show, visitors to Smock’s booth {2741} will have the opportunity to check out all of the exciting new additions to our Smock Everyday collection. New designs include 9 fresh additions to our gift wrap collection, all fun double-sided patterns environmentally printed on 100% post-consumer paper as well as numerous new letterpress greeting cards and letterpress note cards, printed on beautiful bamboo paper and paired with hand-lined bamboo envelopes. Thinking about the holidays already? You’re in luck, because so are we! By popular demand, Smock will introduce several new holiday greeting cards, gift tags and gift wraps at the stationery show so you can take care of all your holiday gift-giving needs in stylish eco-friendly fashion. All of our new designs will be available for sale on our website by the end of May and at select retailers nationwide.
In keeping with our existing collection of fully customizable letterpress wedding invitations, Smock is unveiling three new beautiful wedding invitations designs at the 2009 National Stationery Show, which kicks off in just two days! Each new design is completely chic and completely adaptable by playing with colors, fonts, patterns, envelope linings, edge painting and other embellishments. Looking for a wedding invitation that is uniquely yours and at the same time the most elegant and eco-friendly of designs? Smock has the perfect invitation for the wedding of your dreams. Visit our website to find a Smock wedding dealer near you and be sure to check out some of the great customizations Smock has printed this past year!
{New Smock letterpress wedding invitation designs -Cindrel, Sabion and Dorset}
Our new letterpress designs introduce front patterning {as seen above in Sabion and Dorset}, which will allow for even further customization when selecting your wedding invitations in addition to the ever popular back patterning that make Smock’s letterpress wedding invitations so very special. Cindrel and Dorset also showcase Smock’s exclusive calligraphy fonts, Smock Clermont and Smock Spencerian, based on the beautiful calligraphy of our master calligrapher, Debi Zeinert of Blooming Quill.
One of the things we are most excited about for the National Stationery Show in a couple of days is unveiling our new Social Occasions album, featuring beautiful eco-friendly letterpress and flat offset printing for all occasions. More than just stationery, our 20 social suites feature calling cards, hang tags, social occasions (parties, announcements, births, holiday), stationery, letterhead, and anything else you can dream up. {Download a sneak-peak of the 20 suites here!, 35mb} Perfect for personal or professional use, our social album contains an extensive motif and monogram library, 5 colored bamboo papers, and the ability to mix and match letterpress and offset printing, creating exquisite options for every budget. Smock’s custom social designs will be available through fine retailers across the nation and internationally following the National Stationery Show, so be sure to stay tuned! Look for more photographs coming soon on our web site too….
We’ve been talking about it all week, but we can’t believe that the National Stationery Show is just a few days away! If you’ll be attending the show, make sure to pop over to booth 2741 where the entire Smock team will be hanging out and looking forward to meeting you. Smock is proud to offer an extensive line of true environmental letterpress stationery on luxury bamboo paper and we just know you’ll love our new designs as much as we do. Stay tuned later this week for a sneak peek at some of the exciting new things on the way from Smock!
In preparation for the 2009 National Stationery Show, Smock’s Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler, has been hard at work to make sure our booth, 2741, is really fun and a cool place to hang out while we’re at the show. We joined forces with awesome Etsy seller LilaFrances to dream up these cute Smock hangers that we absolutely adore. Our only regret is not having her make us more so we could fill all of our closets at home with cute Smock paraphernalia!
Are you on Twitter? Now you can follow Smock!
We believe Twitter will be a great way to keep you up to date on all of the fun day to day excitement at Smock as well as to help promote Smock stores across the country and internationally. Have a cool promotion or exciting news at your store? Let us know and we’ll be happy to help spread the word! What’s even bettter? Next week while at the National Stationery Show, we’ll be posting regular updates on both Twitter and here on the Smock blog so you can stay up to date on all of the stationery show excitement. Make sure to follow us and say hi so we can follow you, too!
As we gear up to head to New York City this weekend for the 2009 National Stationery Show, we wanted to share a few photos of Smock’s 2008 stationery show booth – it’s hard to believe it’s already been a year since Smock first launched at the show! Our Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler, did an incredible job of making our first booth absolutely beautiful and we can’t wait for everyone to visit us this year – you can find us at booth 2741.
Smock’s very first National Stationery Show booth showed off our pretty double-sided gift wraps made from 100% post consumer recycled paper – we think it would make totally pretty framed wall art, too! Our Calliope suite {top right} has become one of our best sellers, featuring a fun blue and orange color combination and the sweetest of butterflies and flowers that are oh so chic.
Displays of Smock’s pretty custom letterpress wedding invitations, informational cards, catalogs, gift wraps and greeting cards were made even prettier by great lighting in our tiny little booth. And who doesn’t love bright pink peonies in spring?
We’ve had such an exciting first year and we can’t wait to see what the 2009 show has in store. We promise to come back with lots of photos to share with those of you who can’t visit us in person and to everyone else, we can’t wait to see you next week in New York!
Stay tuned this week for lots of show-related news and special sneak peeks of our many new releases!
Smock is proud to support The 3/50 Project, an independent movement aimed at saving the local shops and stores that make our communities unique and our local economies stronger. Have you taken the 3/50 pledge? Jump in and add your name to the list in support of the 3/50 movement today!
In support of the 3/50 project, we wanted to share some of our favorite shops to visit in Smock’s neighborhood here in Syracuse, NY…
If you’re in the market for a great read, visit Second Story – One billion books on Amazon? Overwhelming. A beautifully curated selection of novels, poetry, nonfiction, magazines, and even a few cookbooks? Much more calming. Plus this place has great sandwiches, teas and smoothies.
{Great chai and heavenly cupcakes at Roji Tea Lounge}
In love with a great cup of tea? Don’t miss Roji Tea Lounge, one of downtown Syracuse’s true gems. If you’re a tea junkie, you can buy some of the best loose teas ever here to take home…or simply enjoy the calming atmosphere, vegan deserts, fabulous music, and really, really good tea. Bubble tea too!
We have a bunch of chocolate lovers here at Smock so we highly recommend Sweet on Chocolate – chocolate makes some of the sweetest gifts, and this cute little shop – only a few minutes walk from Smock’s print shop – makes the best dark chocolate truffles ever.
{Mint boar soap from Syracuse Soapworks}
If you’re searching for the perfect Mother’s Day gift or really a gift for any occasion, you have to visit Syracuse Soapworks. Located just a few blocks down the street from Smock’s print shop, their soaps are fragrant and amazing.
When you realize your entire house looks like an Ikea showroom, Smith Interiors is the place to go for slightly more upmarket modern furniture. We try to stop by this place every so often just to oooh and ahhhh over the cool lights and crazy cool couches.
What are your favorite shops in your community? Share them with us so we can visit if we’re ever in town and be sure to pay a visit yourself sometime soon. If you’re looking for cool stores that carry stationery/invitations in your own town, check out our list of great shops that also happen to carry Smock invitations & paper goods. And, don’t forget to visit The 3/50 Project and start spreading the word to help support local shops!
Smock co-owner, Debbie Urbanski, is an avid lover of nature and the earth as well as a lover of literature and the written word, so she was thrilled to pass along her first recommendation for this week’s installment of Smock Eco Reads. Debbie shared a bit of insight into The Wall, a 1962 novel by Austrian author Marlen Haushofer that she recently read and I know I personally can’t wait to read this novel after her review…
{Source}
So I’ll admit that the premise of this novel did not sound mind altering or gripping – something happens in the world to pretty much everyone, some kind of catastrophe, and this woman becomes trapped in the mountains behind an invisible wall with only a dog, a cat, and a cow for companions. There really aren’t any other people, other than the narrator, in the entire novel. And let me get this out in the open: though I love the world, the planet, and I’m a vegetarian, I’m not a pet person. I don’t really get pets. So a book about a woman whose major companion is her dog? I spent a week with this book on my nightstand, staring at the cover, wondering if I was ever going to get past the first page. But when I started reading, I found a book that was beautiful, moving, gripping, sad, quiet, and amazing.
It’s not a “hit you over the head” environmental book, but it does suggest the devastation and violence that people bring to each other and the landscape. And it does show how a quiet simple life in the middle of nowhere can be filled with complexity and beauty. And it also shows how small humans are, and how big the “other” is – the animal world, the natural world. And it has some of the best descriptions I’ve ever read of mountains — how they’re mesmerizing and menacing and jaw-dropping and scary and gorgeous. But in addition to this, it’s just a gripping read. There is hint of a tragedy that’s finally revealed in the last few pages and I couldn’t take the suspense–I had to read ahead.
The narrator is a meditative soul that I missed the moment the book was finished. It’s been a month or two since I closed up the Wall, and I still miss the book, and I really haven’t been able to get into another novel since. The one small tragedy of this book – I haven’t met anyone else who has read it, let along heard of it (I found it in a great list book called 500 Great Books by Women). So pick this book up, read it, and then pass it on to a friend. It looks like it’s out of print, but you can buy it used or find it at your library, which is more eco anyway.
I did some digging around and it looks as though there are a few used copies of The Wall available on Amazon as well as on Half, including some rare first edition prints. If you end up picking this one up, make sure to let us know!