This stellar custom invitation suite was submitted to us by our good friend Jessica at Judy Paulen Designs in New York, NY. With the perfect design elements on the invitation, this only quietly calls for attention-and we just love that! We absolutely adore the soft, subtle ink palette which is the perfect match to the couple’s fabulous venue in Chicago, Illinois. The neutral and conservative pairing of our dove and pewter inks look positively remarkable! And then there’s the metallic platinum envelope liner providing the perfect color contrast.
inks: dove + pewter | fonts: smock harrison + carrington stripes | paper: 2-ply white | printing: letterpress | liner: metallic platinum| invite size: S7
We have our great friends at Magnificent Milestones in Chicago, Illinois to thank for this custom letterpress Alzette vow booklet! Letterpressed in sky & lake inks on our 2-ply white bamboo paper the cover is perfectly designed with a 3-letter monogram. We think this is a great way to include guests in the joy of exchanging vows.
inks: sky + lake | fonts: nelly + inigo | paper: 2-ply white bamboo | printing: letterpress |
Our good friend Mayra from Always a Bridesmaid in New York, NY did a wonderful job with this Cavall letterpress wedding invitation customization. Orchid seems to be one of the best inks to use with the Pippen liner and brought just the right amount of energy to the simple, text-based design of this invitation. We look forward to seeing what comes next from Always a Bridesmaid!
ink: orchid + red | fonts: smock spencerian + stockton | paper: 2-ply white bamboo | printing: letterpress | corner rounding | liner: the pippen pattern in orchid | invite size: s-8 |
Brought to us by our friends at Alphagraphics in Chicago, the first runner-up in our Smock Design Contest is this truly customized letterpress social note in our Lashar design. It features fabulous edge painting, pattern backing and a gorgeous lined envelope for a look that is totally luxe and completely personalized. Letterpress printed in red and pool inks, the card itself showcases gorgeous red patterned backing in our champlain pattern. It’s edge painted in espresso and then paired with an envelope lined in our payette pattern in espresso ink. This is truly a piece where every detail was considered – the front of the card even features beautiful hand calligraphy in red ink. Smock’s Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler, fell in love with this customization for it’s unique play between pattern and color. We’d love to be the recipients of one of these amazingly beautiful letterpress correspondence cards!
Thank you to Alphagraphics for sending us such a truly unique creation!
Here at Smock, we absolutely love working with our fabulous Smock dealers. We are continually and endlessly inspired by the customizations they dream up and love printing fabulous letterpress invitations, save the dates, escort cards, programs, social notes, business cards and so much more for their clients. In order to recognize the incredible adaptations of our Smock designs that we have been printing in collaboration with our stores, we recently honored ten breathtaking customizations that captured our imaginations and made us smile with glee as we printed them, packaged them up and sent them off to happy clients around the globe.
Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing each of the winning customizations, but we wanted to share a sneak peek of the many lovely letterpress creations that have had us oohing and ahhing for months…
A big congratulations and a heartfelt thank you to the stores we worked with to create these incredible designs…
Real Card Company in Seattle
Alphagraphics in Chicago
The Write Image in Salt Lake City
Wordshop in Denver
Arabesque in Naples, Florida
Kate’s Paperie in Manhattan
RSVP Studio in Toronto
Judy Paulen Designs at Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan
Paper Love in Brooklyn
Today we are thrilled to welcome a guest to the Smock blog, Seana, who recently hosted the most incredible first birthday party for her daughter Madeline. Inspired by the Smock letterpress party invitations she sent to guests, Seana crafted a beautifully handmade, eco-friendly party that has us dreaming up any number of excuses to host great parties. Without further ado, Seana shares with us more about Madeline’s fabulous birthday celebration…
A couple months after my daughter Madeline was born, I was perusing the web for eco-friendly paper companies who had cute birth announcements. I came across Smock and fell in love with the Horsey stationery suite. I decided right then and there they would be the invitations for my daughter’s 1st birthday party. Needless to say, I never actually sent out birth announcements (I know, bad mom!) but as Madeline’s June thirtieth birthday was approaching, I went back to Smock and bought the invites along with the matching Delft correspondence cards for thank you notes. They became my inspiration for her party! I went with an aqua and coral color scheme and started planning the decorations, cake and menu.
It is very important to our family that we make as little impact on our environment as possible so Madeline’s party was planned with that in mind. On my home computer, I designed and printed the happy birthday banner and the party favor nametags. I bought some scrap fabrics and ribbons in coordinating colors in order to make the flag banners and “doilies”. One of my favorite projects was the picture banner. I made a fabric flag banner but left some extra space between the flags, there I used graphic clothes pins to hang home printed pictures of Madeline starting at birth and on through her first year. There won’t be a birthday party for Madeline every year but I will continue to hang the birthday banner, I’ll just change out the number. I will also continue to hang the picture banner, switching out photos for ones from the year we are celebrating. It will become a birthday decoration tradition and it’s much better to re-use than to buy new every year.
The cake, cookies and mini smash cake were fantastic! I went to this really great bakery right down the street from our home in Chicago, The Bleeding Heart Bakery. It is an organic bakery known for their innovative designs and the environmentally responsible way in which they operate their business. I brought in the invites and thank you cards for inspiration and they came up with a delicious carrot cake with the invitation horsey on it. They also made the bird cookies to look like the bird sweetly perched on the horsey’s back. Madeline’s mini smash cake was actually sweetened with agave nectar instead of sugar, a request I made so as to curb that sugar overload for such a small body, and they were happy to oblige.
I will admit that if there is a way that I can get out of a lot of clean up after a party, I am all for it. One way is to use disposable utensils, plates and napkins. Unfortunately using all of that plastic is just not good for the earth so I set out to find some environmentally ways to make the party easier without compromising quality. After doing my research I found some great alternatives. We used disposable, compostable bamboo plates made by the company Bambu and we used disposable, biodegradable utensils made from potato, yes potato! Called Potatoware, these utensils were strong, in fact a lot less brittle than your regular plastic kind. I really couldn’t justify using paper napkins, so we went with cloth, but that was ok, it gave me another excuse to add some color by tying the rolled utensils with ribbon.
The simple menu consisted of:
• Green salad made from our CSA lettuce, organic cherry tomatoes, onions and artichokes all topped with a goddess dressing.
• Fruit salad made up of our CSA strawberries, in-season organic blueberries and in-season cantaloupe.
• Cheeseburgers with condiments also coming from our CSA.
It’s amazing how you can have a fairly simple meal taste SO good just by using fresh, in-season local food.
It was not a very large party, just a few of our close friends and their kids but it was such a nice way to get together to celebrate our little girl’s first year. Madeline is the joy of our lives; she is such a happy one year old and she thoroughly enjoyed her party. We look forward to many more birthdays in the future!
Thank you, Seana, for sharing Madeline’s party celebration with us – we are so completely inspired! And, a big Happy Birthday to Madeline from all of us at Smock!
Magnificent Milestones, one of our favorite Smock dealers in Chicago, had a sweet write-up in the elegant Chicago Social Brides magazine for their cool eco party they hosted in the fall. We were thrilled to see Smock’s “new luxurious bamboo invitations” mentioned too!
One of our Chicago stores, Magnificent Milestones, hosted an Ecouture night recently at their really beautiful West Loop location (partly to announce the arrival of Smock at their store!). We printed the letterpress invitations for the evening on our bamboo paper (they choose the Cavall design). Greg Christian Catering (who specializes in green, local, sustainable and organic cuisine) supplied the food. See more pictures from the night here. Lovely!