We love these elegant and sweet bridal shower invitations, featuring our cute umbrella motif. Pretty and sophisticated, they are flat offset printed in azalea ink on our luxury bamboo paper.

A few weeks back we hosted a really fun open studio here at our Syracuse, New York print shop and we decked the place out in all of our Smock finery. We thought you’d like to take a look! We invited the local public, media, clients, vendors, friends, family and anyone with an interest or passion for printing and the arts to come pay us a visit. In return, we had printing demonstrations, tours, giveaways, an excess of sweets and goodies from a local bake shop and loads of letterpress fun. The Smock team came together to craft DIY paper chain garlands for the Christmas tree and we strung colorful paper bunting from the cross beams in our cool industrial office space, all of which were created from our gift wrap. For the first time ever we set up a little retail shop for Smock Everyday here at the studio and had more fun than you know introducing local friends to our greeting cards, gift wrap, gift boxes, and paper goods.

All told we had over 300 people come out to pay us a visit! It blew us away and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome everyone back again next year. Huge thanks to our friend and local wedding photographer Alice G. Patterson for capturing these special moments for us. We are honored to have the friends that we do and we look forward to making this an annual event. Stay tuned for 2011!

{Photos by Alice G. Patterson.}

We are thrilled to be featured in the Winter 2011 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings! They showcased a custom design project we worked on with our friends at The Wedding Library, drawing inspiration from a vintage handkerchief to create bright and cheerful letterpress wedding invitations, menus, favor tags, table numbers and assorted paper goods. You can also see more of this project on the Martha Stewart blog The Bride’s Guide here and here. Thank you so much to Claudia at The Wedding Library for paying us the honor of working together on such an exciting collaboration!

With the holiday engagement season in full swing, the time to start thinking about fabulous letterpress save the dates to kick of the festivities is drawing near! These awesome save the dates are a custom design from Rugg Road Paper Co. in Boston, featuring our champlain pattern as a letterpress motif. Printed in midnight and sky inks, they also feature sky edge painting for a chic, preppy look that we completely love.

An issue near and near to our hearts, we wanted to spread the word about an incredible effort by PAN North America, one of Smock’s eco partners, to shed light on the devastating effects of pesticides on honeybee colonies and their call for the EPA to take action on this major issue. Why does it matter? Beekeepers face an industry on the verge of collapse, an industry particularly susceptible to the devastating effects of pesticides. With 1/3 of food production reliant on bees for pollination, the collapse of commercial beekeeping would devastate U.S. farmers as well. The time to act is now.

Smock supports PANNA’s admirable environmental efforts through donations via 1% For the Planet, pro bono printing and other partnerships. Just recently we printed a version of our popular Garden letterpress cards for PANNA, which contributors donating $75 or more receive as a special thank you. Wondering how you can get involved, too? Visit PANNA to sign the petition to take a stand with beekeepers and consider giving today. A huge thank you to PANNA for continually inspiring us – bravo!

Recently we had the pleasure of printing these really pretty letterpress bat mitzvah invitations for Dear Emily in Winnetka, Illinois. They are printed on our 1-ply bamboo paper in our Juine design, showcasing soft and elegant sea mist and papaya inks. Sophisticated script paired with Hebrew text make for a fresh and lady-like invitation.

We can hardly believe that the holidays are here, but we’re delighted to wish you a Merry Christmas from everyone here at Smock! To ring the holidays in right, we couldn’t resist sharing one last custom letterpress holiday card we printed this year. This joyful design was sent to us by our friends at Byrd & Bleecker in Fort Worth and features cute hanging ornaments left blank so the family could adhere photos. Isn’t this just adorable? Thanks to Byrd & Bleecker and merry Christmas, one and all!

It turns out, we’re suckers for a fabulous letterpress baby announcement around here and lately we’ve been printing a lot of really cool designs to help little ones make a grand entrance. They can be formal or quirky, designed to accommodate a photo (just adhere with double-stick tape) and look particularly awesome when paired with fun customizations like patterned backings, envelope liners and edge painting. Here are a few recent favorites…

Brought to us by Inscriptions on the Boulevard in Fort Worth, Texas, this custom baby announcement features our Ellie motif printed on our seamist bamboo paper in pewter and silver inks. The envelope is lined in our Seneca pattern in pewter.

The Write Image in Salt Lake City sent us this pretty customization of our Kurai design, printed in taupe and shell inks for a soft and feminine letterpress baby announcement.

This baby announcement is a custom design that also serves as a cool letterpress holiday card, printed in pewter and spring green inks. This fun design came to us from Byrd + Bleeker in Fort Worth, Texas.

From Stationer of New Orleans, this girly baby announcement showcases our Juine design in pearl ink.

Check out the latest issue of 30West where Smock’s Creative Director Amy Graham Stigler is featured. (She’s also the cover girl, too!) Learn about Amy’s design inspiration, her love for letterpress and the unique art history background she brings to designing for Smock. Check it out online now!

Once upon a time we shared with you a whole bunch of gorgeous letterpress designs that we recently honored in our Smock Design Contest. Today we’re back with our first runner up! This design is a custom letterpress birthday party invitation based on our Graham design brought to us by Luxe Expressions in Atlanta. They are printed in bright hues of custom deep pink and green and feature our roxen pattern on the back. Created for an 80s theme 40th birthday party, our guest judge Kristen Magee of Paper Crave says, “The vibrant colors and bold pattern make this such a fun invitation, and the “40” emblem graphic gives the invite a bit of a funky edge. The design is versatile and could be used for so many different types of occasions, but I love it as a 40th birthday party invite. The message it sends is, ‘I’m turning 40, I am completely fabulous, and you are going to have an absolute blast at my party!'” We couldn’t agree more.