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.
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!
While we love printing pretty letterpress stationery for all occasions, we get really excited every time we have the opportunity to print cute letterpress baby announcements. It’s one of the happiest occasions a family will celebrate and we secretly love the chance to print in fun child-like colors and design with cheerful baby-inspired motifs. These baby announcements were no exception. They feature our Ellie motif from our Social Occasions album, printed in tangerine and verbena on our 1-ply bamboo paper. A big thank you to our friends at Paces Paper in Atlanta for bringing us this adorable customization!
After showing off the honorable mentions in our recent Smock Design Contest, we’re down to the final three winners! First up is our 2nd runner up, this beautiful custom letterpress baby announcement from our friends at The Write Image in Salt Lake City. It’s printed in a soft color palette of silver and pearl inks and features our champlain pattern and one of the cartouches available in our Social Occasions album. We love everything about this pretty birth announcement, so perfect for celebrating the arrival of a new baby girl, and so did our guest judge, Nole Garey of Oh So Beautiful Paper who says, “An absolutely perfect birth announcement. Simple and sweet, with both feminine and neutral design details perfect for a baby girl.” Thanks so much to the folks at The Write Image for bringing us this beautiful design!
Recently we announced the winners of our second semi-annual Smock Design Contest. Our finalists for this Smock Design Contest were selected by the Smock team and our Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler. Our good friend Nole Garey of the incomparably inspiring blog Oh So Beautiful Paper then selected the first place winner and runner-ups from among our favorites. We love her picks and know you will, too!
Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks as we reveal all of the winners and detail the incredible creations that earned these beloved Smock dealers a spot at the top – we can’t thank them enough for their endless inspiration and enthusiasm!
Papery & Cakery in Boca Raton, Florida
Francis-Orr in Corona del Mar, California
The Write Image in Salt Lake City
Urbanic Paper Boutique in Venice, California
Judy Paulen Designs at Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan
Just Paper & Tea in Washington D.C.
Wordshop in Denver
Salutations in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Paper & Chocolate in Dallas
Gus & Ruby Letterpress in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
When Smock’s Master Calligraphy, Debi Zeinert of The Blooming Quill, welcomed a new granddaughter this summer, we were positively thrilled for her and her family. It was a true honor and a pleasure for us to print these beautiful custom letterpress baby announcements to welcome baby Natalia into the world. Perfect for welcoming a little baby girl, this customization was based on our pink Lamby greeting card and features lovely hand calligraphy on the inside from Debi herself. The baby lamb motif featured on this card is available through our new Social Occasions album, released earlier this year, so you can mix and match motifs, colors, patterns, and fonts to create the perfect baby announcement or social stationery to celebrate any occasion. This letterpress baby announcement was such a joy to print – we look forward to printing many more!
At Smock we are no strangers to printing incredible customizations of our letterpress wedding invitations brought to us by the great stores we work with, but recently we’ve also been lucky enough to print some fabulous customized invitations for a wide range of other occasions. We love the idea of adpating a wedding invitation design for other events because really, letterpress is gorgeous for any celebration, isn’t it?
This version of our Kurai design, brought to us by RSVP Today in New York City, is updated in papaya and silver inks and includes Hebrew text for a result that is youthful and elegant. We love how a simple pop of bright color, along with our Beaumont serif font, changes the look of the design so dramatically and makes it so perfect for inviting loved ones to celebrate a Bat Mitzvah.
We love this take on the original Helani letterpress design customized as a perfectly adorable baby announcement, a variation on the Helani reception card for a client of Kustom Kreations in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Printed in clover and lake inks, with the addition of the very sweet Etienne script font, it’s bright and fresh and the perfect way to celebrate the birth of a beloved little one.
Printed for Luxe Expressions in Atlanta, this invitation is for a bridal showcase hosted by The Atlantan Brides, and boasts bright raspberry and pewter inks with tangerine edge painting in a custom design based on Helani. The cheerful envelope liner is our Oesa pattern in fun tangerine ink and together it makes for a truly festive invitation. We love this use of a bold and bright letterpress design for a coporate event.
Sweetly printed on our Ellie note card from Smock’s social line, this baby shower invitation is truly adorable. We can think of no better way to invite guests to celebrate the upcoming birth of a new loved one.
This version of Nevis was printed in lake and midnight inks for a farewell brunch and features edge painting in gold, which we absolutely love. Printed at our Save the Date size, the invitation is perfect for inviting loved ones to celebrate good food and good cheer and was brought to us by Arabesque of Naples in Naples, Florida.