While in New York City last week for our Kate’s Paperie events, we took the time to visit many of our favorite Smock retailers! We have lots of photos of our events with Kate’s to share, but first we wanted to share a little glimpse at the rest of our travels across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Our first stop was The Village Invites on 43rd where we spent time chatting with Linda, Adrienne and Jaye. They have the prettiest assortment of great gift wrap and big spools of ribbon that make us dream of wrapping the loveliest of holiday packages.
Being Halloween week, there was no shortage of costumes to be found throughout the city. Here, Lindsy poses with a great Big Bird costume and with a creepy skeleton in our hotel lobby.
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Ok, friends, today is your last chance to come out and see us at Kate’s Paperie – today we’ll be in the West Village (8 West 13th Street) from 4pm to 7:30pm. It’s the final day to take advantage of a special promotion offering 25 free letterpress wedding invitation sets (when you purchase 75) and get the added bonus of getting to work one on one with Smock design experts to create your invitations! We’ve been having a blast all week and hope you’ll come out and join us today. (And if you just want to come say hi, we’d love that, too!) 
We’re excited today to share another honoree in our recent Smock Design Contest! It’s a custom wedding invitation design brought to us by Details in Philadelphia, letterpress printed in gold ink on our ivory bamboo paper. The motif was inspired by our Pippen pattern, which makes an appearance as a gorgeous liner printed in gold. A big thank you to our friends at Details for sending us this great design!
Today’s incredible Smock Design Contest honoree came to us from Epitome Papers in Edina, Minnesota. It’s a custom letterpress wedding invitation design with an elegant botanical motif printed in blind deboss and grass ink with sky edge painting. It also boasts our Clermont hand calligraphy by Debi Zeinert for a total package that is amazingly sophisticated and pretty. Thank you to the folks at Epitome Papers for bringing us this fabulous design! 
Today we’re delighted to share another honoree in our recent Smock Design Contest, brought to us by Social Graces in Nashville. This design is a pretty customization of our Cindrel letterpress wedding invitation design, printed in pewter and cloud inks. With hand calligraphy accents, this design is as elegant as it it is beautiful. A big thank you to our friends at Social Graces for sending us this lovely customization!
Our next Smock Design Contest honoree is a fabulous custom letterpress wedding invitation design from Salutations in Charlotte, North Carolina. The set features a cool #10 business-sized letterpress wedding invitation printed in navy on our 1-ply white bamboo paper with coordinating letterpress reply post cards, reception cards and petite-sized website cards. We love when a couple thinks outside the box! In this case the design is fresh and modern while still feeling traditional. Thanks to our lovely friends at Salutations for sending us such a great design!
Today’s Smock Design Contest honoree is a great custom folded save the date design created for our friends at Byrd & Bleecker in Fort Worth, Texas. We offset printed this design in pewter and papaya inks and used a fun seahorse motif perfect for a wedding in the Bahamas. The envelope is lined in our seneca pattern in papaya and we love the unique look and feel of this custom design. Congratulations to the folks at Byrd & Bleecker for being an honoree in our Smock Design Contest and thank you for sending us this great design!
Brought to us by Perfectly Personal by Jen in Chappaqua, New York our next Smock Design Contest honoree is a fabulous custom letterpress bar mitzvah invitation. Printed on our white bamboo paper, the design is letterpress printed in blind deboss and midnight ink, corner rounded, and features an envelope lined in our sinclair pattern in taupe. A letterpress insert invites Mikey’s friends to celebrate with him at a party later in the evening. We love the look of this set – it’s masculine, youthful and sets the perfect tone for this celebration.
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!
Today we’re excited to announce the winners of our most recent Smock Design Contest! Our friend and paper blogger extraordinaire Kristen from Paper Crave did the honor of selecting our first place winner and runner-ups from among our favorite recent customizations, sent to us by our beloved Smock dealers. Over the next few weeks we will be sharing full details and photos of all our honorees here on our blog so don’t miss it. In the meantime, a big thank you to all of our awesome Smock dealers!
FIRST PLACE WINNER – Salutations in Charlotte, North Carolina
Brought to us by Salutations in Charlotte, guest judge Kristen says, “I love that it’s feminine without being too feminine,” about our winning design, a stunning customization of our Kurai wedding invitation.
FIRST RUNNER UP – Luxe Expressions in Atlanta
Saying that “…the vibrant colors and bold pattern make this such a fun invitation” we loved Kristens’s pick for first runner up, a custom 40th birthday party invitation design for our friends at Luxe Expressions in Atlanta.
SECOND RUNNER UP – Judy Paulen Designs in Manhattan
Kristen’s choice for second runner up is a custom letterpress wedding invitation brough to us by Judy Paulen Designs at Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan. She loved it because “the fantastic color choices and patterns give it a very modern feel.”
HONORABLE MENTIONS
In addition to our three winners, we’re recognizing seven additional designs that inspired us to no end. We extend a heartfelt thank you to our friends at the following stores – we are continually awed by all you do!
Details in Philadelphia