If you’re still looking for unique holiday gifts that help save the world, go right this minute to Nest (www.buildanest.com). Nest is a nonprofit who gives micro-credit loans to women artists in developing countries, and they’re funded by products sold on their web site. We were excited to learn about Nest for a lot of reasons (inspiration! cool gifts! women helping women!), but also because developing countries are often where drastic environmental mis-uses are occurring, simply because there are not enough economic opportunities other than clear-cutting, etc. On Nest, we’re selling a selection of Smock letterpress note cards, letterpress thank you cards, letterpress gift tags, and 100% post-consumer recycled gift wrap. A percentage of every sale goes to fund the hard and good work that Nest is doing. Nest was recently picked by Oprah as a “Gift that Gives.” Thanks to our new Smock wedding dealer, Debra at Luxe Expressions, for turning us onto this cool organization!

This Vettore letterpress wedding invitation came to us from RSVP Today in NYC. Pearl + espresso letterpress inks make for such a sophisticated color palette — perfect for a spring wedding! The Vettore is such a romantic design in these colors…

We’re in love with these letterpress business cards we created for Real Card Company. The front is letterpress printed in sea mist, mango, and taupe — totally inspired colors. The back is the Virelles pattern in sea mist. And the square size is right on — even if you don’t have your own business, these would make sweet letterpress calling cards!

LEGOS. Because without them we would all have cabin fever. Seriously. My oldest plays legos for at least an hour every day. Sometimes more. Weekends can be lego building marathons with my three children and husband hunkered on the floor surrounded by mounds of colors and shapes. Even my middle and youngest build away. Putting green with blue and red with orange to create asymmetrical towers and imaginative aliens. What am I doing during all of this quiet activity, you ask? Loads of laundry, paying the bills or sweeping the floor. Or on a good day writing a blog entry.

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.

This is Smock’s Helani letterpress menu, photographed in our favorite windowsill in our 2nd floor (old artist warehouse) offices. The menu is letterpress printed in 3 colors, midnight, slate and clover — deep rich blues and greens that we love, love, love for the upcoming wedding season.

What a thrill to find Smock’s Garden letterpress thank you cards in this month’s issue of Body + Soul! I don’t read a whole of magazines, but Body + Soul is one of the few that I subscribe too (in part because I really want a Life Coach!) — I love their laid back, eco approach and recipes involving kale. Body + Soul writes, “The newly launched Smock makes its quirk graphic letterpress stationery from sustainable bamboo paper printed with vegetable, low-VOC inks.” We also were excited to have our Delft letterpress notecards in the December 2008 / January 2009 issue of More magazine (they call us “pretty and principled,”) and to see Smock as the tip of the day at Green Daily (they featured our holiday cards — hooray!).

GREEK REVIVAL FARMHOUSES. Like this beauty. We almost were swayed. But practicality won out. And the fact that moving is tiring. Of course, remodeling is as well. But its ghost-free (and allows for an extra bathroom).

We were thrilled to hear that our favorite stationery store in Dallas, Paper & Chocolate, was chosen for Style Me Pretty’s Little Black Book, one of the best wedding resources out there — congratulations! Paper + Chocolate was one of the first stores to pick up Smock’s wedding album when we launched this May — not to mention it’s the best idea for a store. The thought of really good chocolate + really beautiful stationery always gets our hearts racing. We were super excited to see our Rhon wedding invitation on Paper + Chocolate’s Little Black Book page….

We loved seeing the Vettore design in spring green + midnight — what an elegant letterpress save the date! Sent to us by Union Street Papery in San Francisco.