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

Smock was recently featured in two of our favorite trade magazines. Greetings Etc. did a lovely article featuring our website. They talked about the design and functionality of our site and also covered a bit about our company history, sharing insight from co-owners Debbie Urbanski and Harold Kyle.

Giftware News interviewed us about our company history, our love for letterpress and our eco initiatives. They also featured a photo of our Lamby letterpress greeting card. Thanks to both Giftware News and Greetings Etc. for featuring Smock – it’s such a pleasure to be recognized by our favorite publications!

Another custom design, these letterpress save the dates from Union Street Papery in San Francisco feature a cute penguin motif that the couple is incorporating throughout their celebration. We printed these in grass and midnight inks – they were then corner rounded and edge painted in grass. For the perfect finishing touch, the envelope was lined in our modsee pattern, also in grass. From the colors to the embellishments to the cute little penguins, everything about this save the date design is fun, personalized, and a unique reflection of this couple’s upcoming Southampton wedding.

These custom letterpress business cards for Enchanting Tomorrows were brought to us by the folks at Rugg Road Paper Company in Boston. They are printed in papaya ink on our white bamboo paper and feature a flower motif from our Social Occasions album. We love the unique spin on a traditional business card with a vertical orientation – it’s fun and playful and perfect for Alycia’s wedding consulting and floral design business.

It’s a bit ironic that we have sun and summer on the brain today given the blinding snow currently falling over Central New York, but our dreams of sunshine can’t be deterred – we can’t wait for spring to get here! This time of year we start to get a lot of inquiries about invitation designs particularly well-suited to waterfront, beach or destination weddings so we thought we’d dig up some of our favorites from last year to share with you. There’s nothing like the promise of warm summer breezes to get you inspired, snow or no snow.

This first invitation is our Lashar design printed in pewter ink using our Smock Spencerian calligraphy font. The back of the letterpress invitation features gorgeous patterned backing printed in sea mist in our lesina pattern.

This invitation was a beautiful custom version of our Haddington design, printed in espresso ink and blind deboss. The palm tree motif was a custom addition to the design, making it perfect for an elegant destination wedding.

Brought to us by our friends at Peabody Papers in Columbus, Ohio, this version of our popular Vettore design was printed in midnight and seamist inks. The flourishes from the Vettore design were modified in such a way that they remind us of water and waves without being literal.

This custom version of our Engadine design was printed for the folks at Luxe Expressions in Atlanta. It’s a letterpress reply postcard printed in midnight and seamist that features pretty ocean-themed motifs. The card also includes space for guests to reply to multiple weekend events, which is a great option when designing your stationery for a destination wedding.

Over the weekend, Smock participated in The Wedding Party hosted by amazing team from The Wedding Library at the New York Palace Hotel. It was incredibly fun to be a part of this beautiful bridal show event and to get to meet so many brides just embarking on their wedding planning adventures.  The day was officially kicked off with Darcy Miller of Martha Stewart Weddings speaking to brides about current wedding trends, including a few highlights of her own wedding, followed by event planner extraordinaire Colin Cowie. Later in the day, brides were invited to visit the incredible showing of talented wedding vendors (including Smock!) and to watch a breathtaking Vera Wang fashion show. We have so many photos from the event to share later in the week, but first up we wanted to give you a little sneak peek of our Smock display.

We rented furniture from Taylor Creative Inc. so we could invite brides (and even a few grooms) to sit down and flip through our albums while snacking on tasty Tate’s chocolate chip cookies. We brought a collection of pretty milk glass vases and containers, stacks of our signature Smock boxes and simple accessories like vintage doilies and then pulled together a long table displaying just a small handful of some of the most beautiful Smock customizations we’ve had the pleasure of printing in recent months. On our way to the Palace on Saturday morning, we stopped off at a cornerstore on 50th and grabbed huge handfuls of flowers that we arranged in assorted sizes and shapes of containers to add a little extra pretty to our space – it smelled so amazing! Lukcily, we shared a room with the wonderfully talented Jen Huang who took these photos for us to share with you.

We have a lot more photos to share later in the week – stay tuned!

{Photos by Jen Huang Photography.}

We’ve got fabulous news for New York City brides and grooms! Tomorrow we’re holding a 1-day only trunk show at Judy Paulen Designs at Bloomingdale’s that is not to be missed! Trunk show attendees will receive 25 free letterpress wedding invitations and reply cards in addition to their choice between our existing letterpress invitation promotions – either free envelope printing or free letterpress save the dates!

In addition to this fabulous 1-day promotion, trunk show attendees with get to meet with Smock design experts and enjoy complimentary wine and snacks. We’d love the chance to meet with you and talk about how Smock can design the perfect letterpress wedding invitations for your celebration – we look forward to seeing you there!

These letterpress social notes are a customization of our Loire design from our Social Occasions album featuring a custom calligraphy monogram printed in robin’s egg blue. They are perfect for everyday correspondence, but equally appropriate when used as beautiful, personalized letterpress thank you notes.

We’ve had the opportunity lately to print a lot of beautiful letterpress programs, tiny little books detailing order of events, wedding party members, and more. We love the personalized touch that letterpress programs bring to a celebration and can’t wait to print more.

This gorgeous letterpress program is our Lashar design with hand calligraphy accents printed in blind deboss and garden ink, printed for clients of our friends at Paper & Chocolate in Dallas. The inside pages are flat offset printed on our text weight bamboo paper.

A customization of our Vettore design, we printed this letterpress program cover in periwinkle and pewter inks for Paperwhirl in San Francisco.

This pocket-sized letterpress program was printed for Deborah of RSVP Today in Manhattan. The letterpress cover features the motif from our Rousseau pattern with flat offset printed pages. The cover and the pages are hole punched so they can be tied with ribbon.

This program was printed for the folks at Michelle’s Memos in Potomac, Maryland and features our Smock Spencerian calligraphy font. Both the covers and the insert pages are letterpress printed on our luxury bamboo paper for a beautiful stand-out program guests are sure not to leave behind.

After giving you a sneak peek into the studio space of our designer, Amy Graham Stigler, we wanted to share some photos of the open studio party she recently hosted for lucky Smock fans in Wisconsin. First up, no party is complete without gorgeous letterpress invitations. Amy shares, “The color of my studio logo (Monograham) determined the mango and seamist color combination. I needed to incorporate a fair amount of information so I wanted to keep things simple and sweet.  The striped liner really pulled everything together and gave it a bit of a French patisserie feel, which I love and matched the evening’s menu of small pastries, cookies and candies.”

Next, you’ve got to set the stage, in this case by lining the shelves with pretty examples of custom Smock letterpress wedding invitations and stationery and showing off our collection of letterpress holiday cards. And don’t forget the sweets and treats for all your guests! Amy says, “I love a good party and I actually really (really) enjoy all the fussing beforehand.  But the highlight is sharing an evening with friends…new and old.”

Then, invite your friends and have a ball. Amy’s favorite tip for entertaining a crowd – “Keep things simple. I always edit the menu as I would rather do a few things and do them well than fill a table with odds and ends. I also like to choose a ‘house’ (or in this case ‘studio’) cocktail and then offer a non-alcoholic alternative. Less is often more.”

Ok, so we’re officially dreaming up any excuse we can think of to throw a party. How about you?