Our latest Smock Design Contest was yet another success (THANK YOU!). We were so thrilled to see all the customizations, and the hard work from our lovely dealers certainly paid off! At this time we are pleased to show off the Smock Design Contest Winner Plaques! Designed by our talented in-house designer Lindsy Aragona, these stunning plaques are letterpressed in our rich ocean and azure inks on our 2-ply white bamboo paper.  The amazing Debi Zeinert adds her gorgeous touch of hand calligraphy. We gave these plaques to our top ten winners. Our next Smock Design Contest will be featured in 2012!

We were so thrilled when Lily Kesselman (the amazing photographer behind this next real wedding) shared her images of Katie & Jack’s gorgeous New York wedding. Katie worked with our friends at Judy Paulen Designs for their elegant Haddington wedding invitations, which were printed in midnight ink on our white bamboo paper.  This wedding is overflowing with preppy sophistication and we can’t get enough of it!

Katie and Jack were married at the Convent of The Sacred Heart on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. After the ceremony, the couple rode to their reception in style in an iconic vintage taxi, while the guests and bridal party headed to the reception on chartered Greyline double-decker buses – complete with champagne and a tour of the city!

Our great friend, Toni at The Write Image in Rockville, Maryland submitted these breathtaking Sabion letterpress invitations to us.  Our midnight and lavender inks print beautifully on our thick 2-ply bamboo paper. The couple chose to coordinate their set with two cards that were printed with the lavender front patterning and then two cards were printed with only midnight ink – which makes for a peppy look with contrasting pieces! Corner rounding and a beautiful patterned envelope liner in midnight complete this suite.

inks: midnight + lavender | fonts: poetica and therese | paper: 2-ply ivory bamboo | printing: letterpress | front patterning: sinclair in lavender |corner rounding |liner: the rousseau pattern in midnight | invite size: S8

Sent to us by our friends at Bridals by Lori in Atlanta, Georgia these precious Dorset letterpress baby announcements will surely tug at your heart strings!   These adorable baby announcements are printed in pearl and pewter inks with corner rounding to make for the most gracious curves and a completely finished look.  We love to see the unique customizations proud parents dream up to celebrate their new bundle of joy! Paired with our champlain envelope liner in pearl we love this added feminine touch!  We think you’ll agree that these baby announcements are absolutely precious.

inks: pearl + pewter| fonts: smock bescal + stockton| paper: 2-ply ivory | printing: letterpress | edge painting in pearl |back patterning: sinclair in pearl |corner rounding |liner: the champlain pattern in pearl | size: S6

Lose your heart in San Francisco with these recently printed custom letterpress wedding invitations designed by Lindsy Aragona, who is just one of our many wonderful in-house designers.  This ultramodern and whimsical set was submitted to us by our great friends at Union Street Papery in San Francisco, California (would you have even guessed?).  The San Francisco Bay Bridge is letterpressed in our lovely coral ink and the bubbly persona is carried through onto all pieces.  They say people go crazy for a great city like San Francisco-and we’re just as crazy for this imaginative set!

inks: coral + peacock | fonts: clementine and stockton | paper: 1-ply ivory bamboo | printing: letterpress | invite size: S8

This is the first order sent to us from The Wedding Company in Hong Kong and we already can’t wait to see what’s coming next! Michele uses a combination of whisper and pearl inks to give a wonderful 2-color accent to the invitation text of this Dawson-inspired design. The border chosen frames the English invitation as well as the Mandarin one in such a beautiful way. We are very happy to showcase our newest friends, particularly when this is the quality of the invitations they come up with. Well done Wedding Company!

inks: taupe + pearl + whisper | fonts: cameron + carrington | paper: 1-ply ivory | printing: letterpress | size: s8 | 3-color, bilingual invitations |

This cool Hekla custom letterpress + offset invitation suite was submitted by our friends at Hitched in Washington DC. The invitation is letterpress printed on our bamboo 2-ply paper in black with a blind deboss ink that makes it pop. The edge painting in spring and an offset back pattern in black add to the uniqueness of this piece. To top it all off, they decided to go with one of our new chesapeake die-cuts. It is accompanied by an outer envelope lined with our ashford pattern in spring. The piece that makes this suite amazing is the custom sleeve – offset with our seneca pattern in black.

inks: black + spring + blind deboss | fonts: percy + louise | paper: 2-ply white  | printing: letterpress + offset | liner: the ashford pattern in spring | back pattern: the van pattern in black | sleeve: the seneca pattern in black | invite size: S-8 (chesapeake die-cut)

We are beyond thrilled to share a few articles and blog posts that our work has been featured in recently! We love it when the amazing editors, bloggers, and magazines out there decide to feature our stuff. Our first feature was from Brides magazine — which highlighted our Isle gift-tags.

Next up, Stationery Trends. The latest issue featured our Hekla design, a modern invitation with gorgeous chevron patterning — and  a new addition for 2011.

One of our beloved Smock retailers (the Stationer of New Orleans) was featured in the issue alongside a few pieces of custom Smock stationery!

Stationery Trends also gave Smock a few shout-outs in their summer edition, featuring our bee-autiful Honeycomb thank you cards, our gift wrap flowers from the National Stationery Show, and the oh-so-sweet Sugar & Spice greeting card.

Earlier this year, Greetings Etc. also showcased Smock  – Birthday Turtle made an appearance, and a few of our amazing Smock retailers (The Dandelion Patch, Paper & Chocolate, and Sweet Paper) were also featured!

And last – but certainly not least! – we were thrilled to see our calendars on Design*Sponge, our Pollen scratchpads and letterpress calendars on Oh So Beautiful Paper, and lots of letterpress love all-around from Design Crush, 100 Layer Cake, Paper Runway, Outblush, Paper Crave, and Invitation Crush. Thanks again to all of these amazing publications for choosing to feature Smock!

We were SO excited to team up with Antoinette at Paperista for the incredible paper project that we’re about to share. The stationery boutique wanted to create a super-special display for a recent bridal event, so they teamed up with a local college design student to create fashion out of paper. Rika VanHeerde Snyder – a student in the Apparel Design Program at the University of Minnesota and intern at Joynoelle – created the most amazing, one-of-a-kind, letterpress wedding gown and cocktail dress for the display. The dresses were made entirely from recycled Smock stationery and invitations, as well as a bit of our eco-friendly gift wrap. We were completely blown away by the end result — take a look!

Rika worked with hundreds of scraps of bamboo paper to create the dresses.

The corset top on the wedding gown is completely stunning. The gown was crafted with our ivory bamboo paper, and some of the letterpress ink colors that are shown include raspberry, mango and taupe.

The cocktail dress was created with our white bamboo paper and features pretty hints of blue (our Ceylon gift wrap).

A huge thank you to the lovely ladies at Paperista for choosing to work with us on this incredible project!

{Photos by Erica Loeks Photography}

Check out this cool letterpress invitation customization made to our Chasseral design submitted by our wonderful friends at Write for You in Washington DC.  We’re so in love with the gorgeous hues and the way the falling vines in turquoise ink cascade down the invitation.  Changing the orientation of this invitation to landscape adds to the simple elegance of this truly remarkable invitation.

ink: turquoise| fonts: graham + cameron| paper: 2-ply ivory  | printing: letterpress | invite size: S7