Planning a wedding? If you know your wedding date, it’s a great time order save the dates! We’ll give you $100 off your invitation order if you order save the dates in February or March. Invitation orders must be placed by September 30th, 2014 in order to take advantage of this offer. Take a look at some of our favorite save the date customizations below for inspiration! Want to include an engagement photo on your foil stamped save the dates? No problem! We offer digital printing, letterpress printing, foil stamping and blind embossing — combine all of these printing methods to create the save the dates of your dreams. Visit your local Smock dealer to get started on an order today!

Congratulations to the following Smock dealers for being the first 25 to share their favorite save the dates with the world: Annie P Paperie, Creative Parties, Dandelion Patch, Gus & Ruby, Invitations & Company, Inviting Place,  Lion in the Sun,  Mac and Murphy, Menage Fine Stationery, Oliver’s Twist, Paper on the Avenue, Paper Works and Events, Paperista, Ply, PSI Fine Stationery, RSVP Inc, RSVP Today, Shindig Paperie, Smitten Boutique, Southern Niceties, The Stationery Station, Therese St. Clair, Urban Coast, Village Invites, Your Occasion Invitations. 

Love the look of colorful edge painting on a beautifully printed letterpress wedding invitation? So do we! Order your custom wedding invitations with Smock from now through May 31, and we’ll edge paint your invitations for free when you spend $2,000 or more! Choose from one of our 60 ink colors and add a beautiful colored edge to your invitations for a perfect finishing touch. Visit your favorite Smock dealer today to get started on your order!

The fine print: Free edge painting promotion can be applied to any one card with minimum order of $2,000. Promotion can be combined with our other ongoing promotions: free envelope printing on tier 3 envelopes and 10% off 6 printed pieces or more, though order total must reach $2,000 after these promotions have been applied in order to be eligible. Offer ends May 31, 2013. 

We’re off to Fort Worth, Texas this week to host a Holiday Trunk Show with our BFFs at Byrd + Bleecker! Stop on in, create a work of art, order your letterpress holiday cards, or just say hello. We’d love to meet you!

The holiday season is quickly approaching, so to get your sleigh bells ringing, we’re offering free letterpress envelope printing on all custom holiday orders placed from now through December 14! Visit your local Smock dealer today to order your letterpress or foil stamped holiday cards. Need more motivation? Check out some of our newest holiday designs below for inspiration!

Design information, clockwise from top: Smock holiday customization #21 {gold shine foil + sand letterpress ink + white bamboo paper + plaza calligraphy font} | Smock holiday customization #11 {apricot + cherry letterpress inks + white bamboo paper } | Smock holiday customization #3 {red shine foil + white bamboo paper + plaza calligraphy font} | Smock holiday customization #20 {cherry ink + white bamboo paper}

If you haven’t purchased a box of letterpress Change the World cards yet (or if you’re looking to buy more!), you’re in luck. From now through August 27, get an extra 25% off all sale items when you buy a box of our Change the World cards. Use discount code zaeg6Dub at checkout to take advantage of this offer.

Our Change the World letterpress card series launched earlier this year (100% of profits are donated to critical environmental causes) and we can’t say enough good things about the organizations these cards help. Profits from the first card in the series, Sunflower, are donated to the Pesticide Action Network North America to address Colony Collapse Disorder and help save the honey bees (our food supply is dependent on them!). The cards come with organic sunflower seeds that you can plant to help the bees out!

The profits from the series’ second card, Fracking, helps Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project change the gas and oil industry in order to protect the environment and our drinking water. The Fracking cards come with temporary tattoos — you can view photos of people wearing their tattoos (and upload a photo of your own!) on the special Tumblr page we’ve set up at gas-and-water-dont-mix.Tumblr.com.

The fine print: sale ends at 11:59pm on Monday, August 27. Order must contain a minimum of 1 box of Fracking or Sunflower cards to receive the discount. 

How to vote: Visit smockpaper.com/wedding and choose your favorite invitation design. Roll over the photo and click the “like” button that appears. That’s it!

Why vote: For every vote cast through April 12, 2012, we’ll donate $1 to Earthwork’s No Dirty Gold campaign (up to $500) to help put an end to dirty gold mining practices that are devastating the planet.

What happens with the winning design? The invitation design with the most votes will be the next Smock design of the month. From 4/14 – 5/14, all custom orders that feature the winning invitation design (wedding invitations, stationery, save the dates, you name it!) will be 10% off (or 15% off for orders with 6 or more pieces!). You can place your order with one of our amazing Smock custom dealers.

So why should you care about dirty gold mining practices? If you’re engaged, there’s a good chance  you’ve already got a ring with some gold in it (and you may be looking to purchase wedding bands soon, too). There are certain dirty mining practices that have really terrible impacts on the communities and the environment surrounding the mines – did you know?

• The production of one gold ring generates 20 tons of mine waste.
• The drinking water in mining communities often becomes contaminated, and mine drainage can also raise acid levels in rivers and lakes that can be harmful to wildlife and people.  Some mines even dispose of toxic waste in rivers, lakes, and oceans on a regular basis.
• Some of the refining processes that are used in mines release chemicals that cause smog and acid rain.
• Many gold mines create solid waste, too: by employing a process known as heap leaching, these mines drip a cyanide solution through high piles of ore. The solution strips away the gold, but a lot of waste is left over from the process (read: the waste from these sites can sometimes reach over 300 feet – which is nearly the height of a 30-story building!). Many of these heaps are often abandoned because they are too costly to dispose of properly.
• Indigenous people around the world typically lose out when mining leases are granted. In rural communities, locals often become vulnerable to eviction without notice, meaningful compensation or an offer of equivalent lands in a new region because legal land titles aren’t always on hand (even if a family has occupied the same lands for generations).
• Mining is a dangerous job: rock falls, tunnel collapses, fires, heat exhaustion, and other dangers claim the lives of over 15,000 miners every year, and while the profession only accounts for 1% of the world’s labor force, it accounts for 5% of on-the-job fatalities.

Wondering what you can do to help? It’s really easy to take action. Sign the Earthworks pledge today, and be sure to support retailers who are actively pursuing clean gold sources. If you choose to work with a retailer who’s not on that list (like Macy’s or Costco – the only two retailers in the top 10 list that haven’t committed to sourcing responsible gold) be sure to ask your jeweler about the source for the gold in your ring.  Other ways you can help:

• Recycle old jewelry, and have old rings melted down to make new ones. Support jewelers that offer products made with recycled gold.
• Buy vintage or antique jewelry.
• Keep jewelry in your family and pass on to your children or grandchildren.

It’s that time of year again — the Smock letterpress holiday sale is back! This year, we’ve got even more options to choose from for custom letterpress holiday cards, and to make the holidays even sweeter, we’ve got a special promotion going on! Between now and December 1, all custom letterpress holiday orders will receive free printing on our luxury bamboo envelopes.  All you have to do is purchase the blank envelopes, fill out a coupon with your local Smock dealer and we’ll take care of the rest. Need some ideas for your holiday cards? Check out some of the customizations below!

These are just a few of the designs available for the 2011 holiday season — check out this slideshow on Flickr if you’re looking for more inspiration!

We cannot wait to venture out to the West coast this week to host a trunk show event with our friends at Union Street Papery in San Francisco! The event will be held on Sunday, June 12 from 2pm-4pm, and we are so excited to show off all the fabulous letterpress invitation designs from the amazing new Smock wedding album.  In addition to some fantastic promotions (we’re offering 25 free letterpress invitation sets when you buy 75 or more!), you’ll get the chance to chat with Smock design experts to dream up the most gorgeous wedding invitations for your big day.  So come join us — we’d really love to meet you!

Modern and a little bit quirky, we love these custom holiday cards that we worked on with our friends at Nest Paper Studio in Oxford, Mississippi. They use motifs from our Everyday collection, offset printed in pewter and red inks. They cheekily wish family and friends a holiday that is “off the chain,” a playful season’s greeting that we can’t help but love.

Don’t forget that our Smock holiday promotion ends December 1! Visit your local Smock dealer to get started today.

We’re going to take you on a bit of a holiday adventure this week! With just a couple of weeks left to take advantage of our free envelope printing promotion on custom holiday orders, we thought we’d share a handful of the incredible letterpress holiday cards we’ve been printing this year. Nothing gets us excited for the holidays more than a really beautiful letterpress card, like this custom design featuring the crochet motif from our Smock Everyday collection as pretty snowflakes. Printed in silver and navy inks, this lovely customization came to us from our friends at Kate’s Paperie at their Midtown location. Still on the hunt for the perfect custom holiday cards? Our holiday promotion is good on orders placed between now and December 1!