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!”
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!
This letterpress save the date is the last of our honorable mention in our Smock Design Contest, featuring a pretty floral motif from our Social Occasions album and boasting our Smock Spencerian calligraphy font. Printed in navy ink paired with blind deboss, we printed this customization for our friends at Judy Paulen Designs at Bloomingdale’s in New York. It’s incredibly chic and effortlessly elegant, two qualities we happen to love in letterpress save the dates.
Stay tuned for the top place winners in our Smock Design Contest as selected by Nole Garey of Oh So Beautiful Paper!
In celebration of spring and the upcoming Easter weekend, Smock’s creative director Amy Graham Stigler shares a few of her favorite things about spring with us today. We’re feeling completely inspired to start our spring cleaning and planting now. How about you?
Spring is my favorite season (when it cooperates) so its hard to narrow the field of things I love best. So here are a few things: I LOVE the light and early blooms and freshness of the air. I LOVE that I can run outside without worrying about ice and snow and frigid temps. I LOVE that the markets resume (flea and farmers). I LOVE that my kids are either on a bike or in a tree. I LOVE our magnolia and apple trees that absolutely explode with flowers and fragrance.
For Easter, we always start with an Easter egg hunt. The kids each get a basket with a few goodies and then go searching for sweets and eggs, which we dyed the night before. If weather permits the hunt continues outside. And we always do brunch with the Easter bunnies that the kids still adore – even though they are ‘on to them’.
We start to reclaim our yard and prepare our vegetable and herb garden. We start frequenting the farmer’s markets for herbs and flowers to plant and early edibles. We start our weekend family hikes on the many trails in our area. And my husband and I try to fit in a ‘date trail run’ at least once a week.
Casual dinner parties with friends and their kids is our favorite way to entertain so in the spring we just tweak the menu and decor to fit the season. The vases are filled with tulips and daffodils and other happy spring blooms, the menu gets a bit lighter, such as a seasonal soup and a salad, and we always hope that some portion of the evening can be spent outdoors. Of course, decorating cupcakes or sugar cookies with pastel candies is always a sweet way to end the evening.
Brought to us by the friendly folks at Paper & Chocolate in Dallas, the next honoree in our Smock Design Contest is a custom letterpress holiday card that was an absolute joy to print. The design was created using a Spencerian calligraphy motif from our Social Occasions album printed in red and grass inks. The patterned envelope liner uses our iznik pattern with patterned backing on the card itself in our sherbrooke pattern. The piece was then corner rounded and edge painted in red for a complete look that is incredibly festive and perfect for the holiday season.
To learn more about Paper & Chocolate, check out their recent Smock Store Spotlight.
Keeping on with our Smock Design Contest honorees, this next design is a custom Haddington letterpress wedding invitation sent to us by Just Paper & Tea in Washington, DC. It was printed in tangerine and a custom bright pink ink with bright pink edge painting and a matching liner in our payette pattern. We love this bold modern take on the classic wedding invitation using our Haddington calligraphy design in bright cheerful ink colors. Paired with edge painting and a patterned envelope liner, it’s a thoroughly modern interpretation of a timeless design.
Thanks so much to our friends at Just Paper & Tea for sending us this amazing creation!
The next honoree in our Smock Design Contest is this custom save the date that we printed for our friends at Saluations in Charlotte, North Carolina. This is a double-sided design that we offset printed in peacock and seamist inks on our 1-ply bamboo paper. Salutations’s self-proclaimed Chief Style Officer Holly shares, “This save the date is my favorite so far! This was a collaborative effort with a fabulous bride who had a great design sense. We started with a vintage duogram. Inspiration was then drawn from the Tallulah design in the Social Occasions album, as well as the champlain pattern that she saw on a Smock box we had in the store from an order that had just arrived. It was so exciting to see the design ideas crafted into a beautiful reality by Smock’s wonderful designers and printers!”
Thank you so much to the team at Saulations for bringing us this incredible customization – it’s one of our very favorite save the dates!
Brought to us by our lovely friends at Urbanic Paper Boutique, this next honoree in our Smock Design Contest is a customization of our Helani letterpress wedding invitation design. We love the gorgeous color palette, printed in azalea and pewter inks, and the fun mixing and matching of patterns. The letterpress invitation itself is printed in 2-color letterpress with patterned backing printed in azalea ink in our willoughby pattern. The reply post card was printed in 1-color letterpress in azalea ink with a sweet little accommodation card printed in pewter ink. For the perfect finishing touch, the envelope was lined in our champlain patterned printed in pewter.
Thank you so much to Urbanic for allowing us the great pleasure of printing this letterpress invitation suite. To learn more about this amazing Smock dealer, check out their recent Smock Store Spotlight feature.
The next honoree in our Smock Design Contest is this cool custom letterpress birthday party invitation brought to us by our friends at Wordshop in Denver. A play on our Bourbon letterpress thank you card, it’s printed in gold and pewter inks in honor of a very special first birthday party. We love this custom design and are honored to include it among our Smock Design contest winners.
