Last week our Smock team temporarily relocated to New York City and the Jacob Javits Center where we attended the New York International Gift Fair for the first time. Now that we’re back in Syracuse, we thought we’d share a behind the scenes look at the setup of our booth and the final result, including a sneak peek at some of our newest eco paper goods and stationery!
When you show up at Javits, this is what you show up to – a blank space with bare floors and a sign declaring the space as yours. In our case, the sign was crooked and hanging by a thread. No worries! We had a plan.
We ship everything to New York in two large freight crates. Then begins the task of unpacking, laying down flooring, putting up walls and assembling furniture and shelving.
After many hours of work, we finally started unwrapping product to place in the booth. We merchandise the booth the way we envision merchandising an awesome store filled with nothing but Smock goods. (Now that would be a cool store!)
Once everything is in place twelve hours later, we’re left with a booth that looks a little like this…
So there you have it! Check out our newest eco paper goods (including new gift boxes, sticky notes, gift wrap and gift bags!) and thanks to everyone who stopped by to visit us at NYIGF last week!
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
This letterpress save the date is one of our favorites of the 2010 wedding season so far, 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.
These pretty letterpress social stationery pieces are from our Juine suite featuring a folded social note and a grommeted hang tag. Both are printed in olive and azalea inks, and the envelope is lined in our mondsee pattern printed in azalea. The hang tag features our Smock Clermont calligraphy font while the social note showcases Farringdon, one of the standard monogram options available in our Social Occasions album. Thank you to our friends at Alphagraphics in Chicago for bringing us this cool customization!
Have you heard about the Brooklyn Pop Up Wedding Series? Smock is proud to be a sponsor of this unique month-long event, which will culminate with one lucky couple winning a dream wedding styled by the editors of Martha Stewart Weddings! Other organizers include our friends at The Wedding Library, one of our favorite wedding bloggers, Vané of Brooklyn Bride, and the friendly folks of 303Grand.
On Saturday, June 13, Vané will be hosting a cool party featuring a raffle with some amazing prizes, with all proceeds benefiting the I Do Foundation, an organization that helps bride arrange charitable donations with nonprofit organizations. One of those prizes will be a set of 100 one or two color letterpress save the dates with printed envelopes or personalized stationery from Smock! If you’re in Brooklyn, make sure you’re there on Saturday night – the first 25 brides to show up will score incredible gift bags, too!
In addition to doing pro bono printing for the environmental organizations and causes that we love, we also donate our letterpress stationery and invitations to worthy events that are working to protect the planet. We were so happy to help out the Waterkeeper Alliance for two silent eco-auctions these past few months – we donated custom letterpress stationery and helped raise over $1,000 for this great nonprofit, which works internationally to keep water clean. Enjoy the pictures (taken by Bill Marsh Photography from the Lake Louise event). Pictures of the Deer Valley event can be found here (go to gallery then photos)
Both celebrity ski events looked amazing and inspiring – so many good looking people coming together to enjoy the outdoors and help the planet (and it’s true, we had fun celebrity spotting too)! But our hearts flip-flopped when we get to see the pics from the Fairmont Lake Louise event. Lake Louise is one of the most gorgeous places on the planet to us. Harold (my husband and co-owner of Smock) and I honeymooned in the Canadian Rockies (staying at the Lake Louise hostel of course!), but we’ve returned every other year or so during the fall to hike, be inspired by the mountains there, and stalk the lobby of the beautiful Fairmont Lake Louise. We named our now 2-year-old son Jasper after Jasper National Park (a bit north of Lake Louise), and we’ve taken Jasper to Lake Louise and the surrounding mountains the last two Septembers. If you need a place to remind you of why this world is good, climb into a few mountain passes around Lake Louise.
Carrie, who coordinates the auctions, was so kind to send us write-ups about the two events.
Each December, more than two hundred celebrities and corporate leaders come together for the Waterkeeper Gala at Deer Valley Celebrity Skifest to show their support for one of the most serious environmental issue of our time: CLEAN WATER. This exciting event hosts luminaries from the worlds of film, philanthropy, business, television and Olympic sport and features Live and Silent Auctions that deliver on the latest lifestyle, fashion, home, luxury and eco-conscious living trends. This year, Smock was a featured partner in Skifest’s first-ever EcoAuction and our custom bamboo letterpress stationery set inspired a bidding war between an eco-entrepreneur and an anonymous bidder. Celebrities including Larry David, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Gavin Rossdale, Gwen Stefani, Matthew Modine, Gloria Reuben, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt joined environmental leader and founder of Waterkeeper Alliance Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to raise over $500,000 to support Waterkeeper’s fight for everyone’s right to clean water. The entire weekend of events, including the auctions, was featured in a full hour CBS Sports presentation, which continues to air throughout the winter.
After the success of Smock’s custom bamboo letterpress stationery lot at Deer Valley Celebrity Skifest, Waterkeeper invited Smock to participate in their Canadian Ski Fundraiser – the Fairmont Lake Louise Celebrity Sports Invitational. This hotly-anticipated event draws together more than 600 celebrities, sports stars, philanthropists and corporate leaders to enjoy a wintersports weekend in the Canadian Rockies benefiting Waterkeeper Alliance. Smock was once again featured in the Silent Auction at a gala that played host to celebrities including Alec Baldwin, Peter Fonda, John McEnroe, Marcia Gay Harden, Joe Pantoliano, Melissa Rivers, Alan Thicke and Jonathan Silverman.
Smock’s designer Amy Graham Stigler is guest blogging on Design Mom this week about how to host kid-friendly dinner parties. Lots of smart, practical inspiration and advice. Check out some general tips, how to set the stage, the food, and the food and drinks. Also check out a a sweet post Design Mom did on Smock a few months ago, featuring some of our letterpress social stationery and letterpress fill-in invitations too. Enjoy! And then go out and host a dinner party of your own!
This was a great idea we hadn’t seen before — custom letterpress stationery in the size of a reply card. It seems the PERFECT size to us — sweetly intimate, and just enough room to write a nice personal note (but not too much room!). An extra bonus: it uses less paper than larger social stationery cards (eco!), which also makes it less expensive (nice!). This letterpress stationery is in our Haddington invitation design, using our Smock Spencercian fonts (based on our favorite calligrapher’s penmanship). And the gold edge painting! Oh, gold edge painting makes us swoon — we would like to edge everything we could in gold right now. It adds such an elegant finish to a card. Sent to us by our friends The Write Image in Rockville, Maryland.
Though we’re still enjoying the 10 degree mornings and snowfalls (and icefalls too), we can’t help but think of spring just around the corner — so this letterpress stationery, in the Kurai design, hit a warm spot in our hearts. We love the sweet patterned envelope liner too.
Wow. This stationery just made our jaws drop when it came through our print shop. The combination of envelope lining (willoughby pattern in midnight) + backing (seneca pattern in pool) + the name letterpressed in midnight ink + rounded corners + ivory bamboo paper is so perfect! This design was sent to us by our friends at Salutations in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.