We love these cool letterpress party invitations we recently printed, a sophisticated pairing of midnight and taupe. The front features a modern, minimalist design while the back boasts our roxen pattern – the invitations were then edge painting in metallic silver for the perfect finishing touch. Thank you to our friends at Just Paper & Tea in Washington, DC for bringing us this wonderful design!

With Father’s Day just around the corner, we thought we’d take a moment to introduce you to our very first letterpress Father’s Day card, new for 2010. In muted masculine colors, it’s perfect for the number one father in your life. Nothing says, “I love you, Dad” quite like a great letterpress card.

These letterpress bat mitzvah invitations we printed, our Lashar design printed in verbena and pewter inks, are a fun mix of modern and traditional. We love the bold colors paired with the formal mix of script and roman fonts. The reverse of the invitations feature our inari pattern printed in black for a look that is contemporary and fresh without feeling too youthful.

Now that we’re back from the National Stationery Show, we’ve been sifting through big stacks of business cards and calling cards we collected while in New York. It got us thinking about how many fun letterpress business cards and calling cards we’ve been printing lately so we thought we’d share a handful of our recent favorites. Like a good letterpress wedding invitation, nothing leaves quite the same lasting first impression as a beautifully designed letterpress business card or personalized calling card.

Wow! It’s hard to believe it but the 2010 National Stationery Show has already come and gone – and we had an amazing time! Thank you to all of our friends, old and new, who stopped by to visit us, check out our new products and share your love of paper goods with the Smock team. Getting to spend time with people who love stationery as much as we do is undeniably our favorite part of attending the show! Luckily for us, our friend Missy (the incredibly talented namesake of Missy Photography) paid our booth a visit and shared these gorgeous photos with us so before we spend the weekend getting some much-needed rest, we wanted to share them with you. (Look closely and you’ll see lots of gorgeous new designs coming soon from Smock!) Thanks, Missy!

Our favorite Smock toddler even dropped by for a visit, definitely a highlight of the show for us…

{Photos by Missy Photography.}

We can hardly believe it, but it’s true – the 2010 National Stationery Show kicks off later this morning! For those of you attending the show, we’d love to have you come visit us in booth 2241 where we’ll be spreading our love for stylish eco letterpress stationery and paper goods. We’re excited to announce that Smock’s calligrapher, Debi Zeinert of The Blooming Quill, will once again be joining us at the show offering complimentary calligraphy for visitors to our Smock booth. You can catch her from 9am to 6pm today and again from 11am – 2pm tomorrow and 10am to 1pm on Tuesday. Be sure to stop by and say hello!

And just to get you good and excited, here’s a little sneak peek at our booth (and all of our beautiful new products we absolutely adore) from setup yesterday –

It’s hard to believe, but the 2010 National Stationery Show officially opens in just twelve days! We’ve been hard at work preparing for the show – there are so many fun new things to come from Smock this year! Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been mailing out invitations to our favorite retailers and media contacts to visit us at booth 2241 to check out all of the exciting new releases. While we can’t share everything just yet, we did want to give you a little sneak peek at the pretty letterpress printed envelopes that have been arriving in mailboxes nationwide. They feature beautiful hand calligraphy addressing from our dear friend Debi Zeinert of The Blooming Quill. For those attending the show, we’re excited to announce that Debi will once again be in the Smock booth offering hand calligraphy for visitors from 9 to 6  on Sunday, May 16th, and again from 11 to 2 on Monday, and 10 to 1 on Tuesday. We look forward to seeing you there!

New England portrait and wedding photographer Brea McDonald recently planned a baby shower for her good friend, Amber. Hosted at The Blue Elephant in Saco, Maine, she pulled together a beautiful garden-inspired event using her collection of vintage table linens and a bunch of sweet DIY touches. The coolest part? The sweet DIY paper pinwheels she crafted using Smock gift wrap that she purchased at Gus & Ruby Letterpress, one of our beloved Smock dealers. We love this idea! Our gift wraps all feature colorful double-sided patterns printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper. It’s always a treat for us to see the unique ways people put our recycled wrapping paper to work, but these paper pinwheels are definitely one of our favorites!

To read more about this pretty baby shower, visit Brea’s blog.

{Photos by Brea McDonald.}

At long last, we’re excited to share the winner of our Smock Design Contest, a custom letterpress and offset wedding invitation sent to us by our friends at Papery & Cakery in Boca Raton, Florida. This design features offset printing in a custom palm tree design on the front, printed in sand ink, combined with letterpress text printed in midnight ink. It’s a sophisticated combination of texture and color that is exemplified with the perfect finishing touches – corner rounding and edge painting in midnight. The envelope was lined in our payette pattern in midnight, perfectly coordinating with all of the other design elements for a look that is polished and simply beautiful.

Our special guest judge Nole Garey of Oh So Beautiful Paper selected this design as our contest winner, because she fell in love with the combination of letterpress and offset printing. She says, “I love everything about the design, from the color selections to the midnight blue edge painting to the calligraphy details. I love the way the soft palm trees almost look like delicate feathers against the ivory background.”

Thank you so much to Papery & Cakery for sending us this incredible design and to all of our design contest winners for continually inspiring us. Thanks are also due to Nole for helping us out with the difficult task of narrowing down all of the amazing designs to just a few winners. Thank you!

To learn more about Papery & Cakery, check out their recent Smock Store Spotlight.

As we near the end of our Smock Design Contest honorees, it’s time to share our 1st runner up – a beautiful custom letterpress social note brought to us by Francis-Orr in Corona del Mar, California. This design is truly unique, printed in seamist, papaya and midnight inks in a vibrant combination of color and pattern. The background of the card is our willoughby pattern in seamist and the patterned envelope liner also features our willoughby pattern in midnight. Guest judge Nole Garey of one of our favorite bogs, Oh So Beautiful Paper, loved this design and says, “A gorgeous mix of pattern and color! The papaya ink around the monogram creates a beautiful contrast against the pale patterned background. I’m also just as smitten with the juxtaposition between the flourish design details and strong serif type of the monogram. Gorgeous!”