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.

Like so many of you, we were stunned by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf Coast that dominated the news this spring and summer. While the spill has now been contained, the environmental impacts of the spill and the threats associated with offshore drilling persist. Oceana, an inspiring advocacy organization, has taken an active role in the movement against offshore drilling, and we want to help – this Saturday and Sunday (9/18 + 9/19), go to smockpaper.com, purchase any cards, lettersheets, or gift tags from the Isle suite and we’ll donate 100% of the Isle purchase to Oceana. Printed on bamboo paper, our Isle suite is inspired by art nouveau and (an oil free) underwater beauty, and includes our bestselling “thank you very much” whale card.

You can learn more about how to get involved and sign the petition protesting offshore drilling on Oceana’s website. And don’t forget to shop our Isle collection on Saturday and Sunday when we will be donating 100% of sales to help further Oceana’s cause.

Today is Tuesday, which during the summer and early fall months means it’s CSA day at Smock! Smock proudly subsidizes CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) memberships for all employees through a local organic farm, Grindstone Farm. Once a week, a big van full of freshly picked organic veggies shows up at our door and we always love digging through the boxes to see what we have that week. This year we’ve been eating a lot of rainbow chard, kale, bokchoy, a variety of lettuces, onions, garlic, lots of beautiful tomatoes, potatoes, and zucchini galore.

Here is a quick peek at today’s share – parsley, patty pan squash, three varieties of tomatoes, baby carrots, two varieties of radishes, lemon basil, lots of tomatillos and the first of this season’s apples.

With tomatillos greeting us week after week, we’ve all been sharing ideas on how to best use them up. The verdict is that a great roasted tomatillo salsa can’t be beat. We love this recipe from epicurious – it’s simple, quick and tasty. Does it get much better?

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

1 1/2 pounds fresh tomatillos
5 fresh serrano chiles (or sub the peppers of your choice; remove the seeds for less heat)
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/2 cup fresh cilantro
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons coarse salt

Preheat broiler or grill.

Remove husks from tomatillos and rinse under warm water to remove stickiness. Broil chiles, garlic, onion and tomatillos on rack of a broiler pan 1 to 2 inches from heat (or on the grill), turning once, until tomatillos are softened and slightly charred, about 7 minutes. Peel garlic and pull off tops of chiles. Purée all ingredients in a blender.

Allow to cool to room temperature and serve with your favorite chips or Mexican fare. Enjoy!

Rounding out all of our exciting new releases, we’re happy to introduce our inspired new letterpress social stationery designs, available now at your local Smock dealer. Perfect for letterpress baby announcements, bar and bat mitzvah invitations and save the dates, our latest designs showcase fabulous colors, bold patterns, our exclusive calligraphy fonts, and can even be designed to fit a wallet size photo. Looking for truly inspired letterpress baby announcements, invitations, moving announcements, or calling cards? We’ve got you covered.

Today we’re extending an overdue shot out to two of our favorite shelter magazines for featuring Smock! First up, Smock’s Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler, was featured in an incredible interview and fashion spread in Better Homes and Gardens. She was whisked off to New York City where she was a model for a day, sharing her love for vintage accessories and her inspiration for all things Smock. You can read more about her Better Homes and Gardens photo shoot on our blog.

That same month, our Bourbon letterpress thank you card was featured in a great round up of thank you cards in House Beautiful.

Thanks so much to two of our favorite magazines for including Smock in such fabulous issues!

These letterpress save the dates are printed in classic black ink on ivory paper in our Sabion design, featuring a pretty dotted border. The envelope is lined in our Seneca pattern in black for a timeless, elegant look. A big thank you to Salutations in Charlotte for sending us this beautiful customization!

Want in on a little known secret? These ten beauties (standard liners from our Social Occasions album) are over 50% less than our custom envelope liners! Our standard liners are still the same high quality offset printing on bamboo paper, but made more affordable because we keep these ten popular options in stock. Featured colors include pewter, pool, mango, grass and azalea. If your local dealer carries both our Social Occasions and Wedding album, you can use these standard liners with any design, including wedding invitations! To learn more, visit a Smock store near you!

Recently unveiled at the National Stationery Show and the New York International Gift Fair, today we’re excited to introduce you to our latest eco stationery and paper goods from our Everyday collection! Just in time for back to school season, our new letterpress greeting cards, eco gift wrap, gift bags, eco sticky notes, patterned boxes, letterpress notepads, pocket-sized notebooks (and more!) can be found on our website and at Smock retailers worldwide.

Eco Sticky Notes
Our new eco sticky notes are bright and vibrant, featuring 700 sticky notes made from 100% post consumer recycled paper. They are FSC certified and made locally here in Upstate New York.

New Jotter Notebooks
Our jotter notebooks come in a set of two coordinating jotters with 40 pages each. They are made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper with covers made from our signature gift wrap and letterpress printed with the word “notes.” We keep them in our pockets, our purses and at our fingertips for jotting down great ideas.

New Letterpress Notepads
Our pretty new letterpress memo notepads feature letterpressed bamboo paper covers + 90 blank interior pages made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper.

New Patterned Eco Boxes
Acid-free and made from 100% post consumer recycled materials right here in Upstate New York, our new eco boxes come in three sizes and a variety of patterns and colors. They are perfect as gift boxes, keepsakes boxes and as stylish storage solutions. How will you use yours?

New Eco Gift Bags
Our new eco gift bags are truly one of a kind. They are made for us in the Himalayan forests of Nepal by a really cool community-owned group devoted to sustainable forestry. They are FSC certified and silkscreen printed on handmade lokta paper – they’re also sturdy enough for re-use! These bags are made using papermaking techniques that have been around since the 12th century A.D.

New Letterpress Greeting Cards
More of our letterpress greeting cards you know and love, our new cards feature all new occasions including happy new home, baptism, bar/bat mitzvah, pet sympathy, and graduation in additional to perennial favorites such as happy birthday, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, baby, wedding and engagement greeting cards. All of our greeting cards are sustainably letterpress printed on our bamboo paper and come paired with patterned envelopes.

New Eco Gift Wrap Patterns
A long time Smock favorite, our eco gift wrap is made from 100% post consumer recycled paper and features colorful double-sided patterns. We’ve introduced six new patterns all perfect for the upcoming holiday season and occasions beyond.

Stay tuned for even more great new designs and updates!

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!