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!

You’ve sent save the dates. Ordered invitations. Received invitations. Jumped for joy. Then stopped to realize you haven’t got a clue how to put these things together. Not sure how to stack your cards? Invitation assembly got you stumped? Don’t worry – we can help! Check out this how to and allow us to walk you through the entire process – we made it easy for you!

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You need these letterpress invitations now. We’re serious. Our 14 brand new letterpress wedding invitation designs just launched on our web site and they’re available in stores right now, too. Some of our favorites include the chevron-crazy Hekla, the preppy formal Breton, and the romantic flutter of Aneto. We didn’t feel like stopping after 14 designs, though — the new album features a customization of each design, so we’ve doubled the amount of pretty you can choose from. We only spent, oh, about 9 months on this release. But it was worth it.

Planning a Bar or Bat Mitzvah? Wedding? Birthday Party? Rehearsal Dinner? Baby shower?? These new designs are perfect for special occasions, and they’re all completely customizable, so go crazy & make one your own. We think you’ll love the die-cuts (or perhaps some hand bordering?), and the new gift wrap liners are pretty cool, too. We even have coordinating postage stamps to go with each new design.

Dying to get your hands on some of that gorgeous bamboo?? Visit a Smock dealer & see the new collection today.

Stop on by our booth at the New York International Gift Fair for an explosion of color August 13th to 18th. You can go home with beautiful Smock buttons or a DIY pinwheel kit, both made from our signature gift wrap. You will also witness our new letterpress and offset cards for September 2011—available NOWHERE else…yet! Careful the ink may still be wet on these ones. We hope to see you at booth #4162 at the Jacob Javits center during the show.

While we were in Los Angeles for the Urbanic Summer Social, Lindsy and I made time to stop in and visit some of our lovely West Coast Smock retailers. One of our first stops was to Christie, located in beautiful Manhattan Beach. The shop carries a gorgeous range of unique gifts and cards, and there’s a great area set up to view albums and order custom stationery.

Here, Lindsy shows Kim and Mara the new album from our sister company and BFF, Bella Figura.

The ladies at Christie were also kind enough to share with us what they love most about the shop.

What about your store are you most proud of? What makes Christie unique?

We’re most proud of the fact that we’ve been in business for 26 years – we started out as a small card and gift shop in a smaller space down the street, and about 4 years later we moved into a larger space, where we were able to start offering custom printing to our clients. Our shop is located in a really cute little beach community, and our clients think we work in the happiest place on earth (and we agree!). People come a long way to see us here, and many of our clients say it’s like coming to Cheers – where everybody knows your name. We’ve printed birth announcements, Bar and Bat Mitzvah invitations and wedding invitations all for the same kids – we’ve seen a lot of our clients grow up.

What are some of the hottest trends you’re seeing lately?

We’ve seen a lot of navy and pink together these days, and monograms are still really big – we’re seeing monograms everywhere! We’ve also noticed that a lot of our brides are loving hand calligraphy for their envelopes – it adds such a nice touch to any invitation set.

If you’re ever in Manhattan Beach, we highly recommend stopping in to see everything that Christie has to offer!

Title: Edge Painting Love
Photographer: Cyd, letterpress marketer
Medium: iPhone
@ Smock since: 2009

Jolie Colis is a local Syracuse company that takes after our own hearts. Proprietress Carol has a love for paper and a passion for well-wrapped gifts, and specializes in offering gift styling services that dazzle. This pretty package features our Veranda recycled gift wrap, made up with satin ribbons and tiny little sparkles and beads that play off the floral design. You can see more on the Jolie Colis blog. So lovely! Thanks for sharing, Carol!

You couldn’t tell by the snow storm that slammed Central New York last night and early this morning, but spring is on the way! We’re getting so excited to start up our annual Community Supported Agriculture program with Grindstone Farm and it got us thinking about our friends at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York. We recently contributed pro bono letterpress printing to their fundraiser event at Candle 79 in New York City honoring chef Leslie McEachern of Angelica Kitchen for her 30 year career as a chef supporting local organic agriculture in New York State. It was an honor to be a part of this event!

All of the letterpress pieces feature our Rhon design printed in peach and taupe inks. We love this color combination! It felt appropriately earthy for this autumn event while still being super sophisticated.

NOFA-NY sent over a few photos from the event. The food looks so good! This is our kind of party.

Many thanks to our friends at NOFA-NY for extending us the honor of being a part of this important event and for your ongoing efforts! Read more about NOFA’s work on the NOFA-NY website.

A while back we sent our friends at Salutations super yummy cupcake kits from Saint Cupcake as winners of our Smock Design Contest. In return, they sent us this really sweet thank you note that reminded us just how lucky we are to work with the coolest retailers the world over. If you’re on the hunt for fabulous stationery, stop in and visit one of our Smock dealers today!

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.}