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!
Brought to us by The Write Image in Rockville, Maryland, we love this letterpress wedding invitation set. The letterpress invitation itself is printed in 2-color letterpress in pearl and black inks and showcases a customization of our Vettore motif using a portrait orientation. The reply card and letterpress rehearsal dinner invitation are printed in 1-color letterpress in black ink, a really great way of keeping letterpress affordable without sacrificing style or elegance.
If I wasn’t running a letterpress invitation company, I would love to be Nicholas Kristof. He’s an editorial writer for the NY Times who is a wonderful example of using one’s life – and job – to bring about concrete change in the world. One of his focuses has been bringing attention to women’s plights around the world – childhood prostitution, for instance, or the crazy high mortality rates for women in childbirth, or the lack of education of girls. He writes, “In the 19th Century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape. Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater. ‘Women hold up half the sky,’ in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos.” What a guy. How can we, as women, not care about this?
His latest column in last Sunday’s paper deals with those suffering from obstetric fistulas – 3 to 4 million women in Asia and Africa, often injured in childbirth while teenagers because they gave birth before their pelvises were fully grown. After giving birth, a young woman with obstetric fistulas is “incontinent,” Kristof writes, “steadily trickling urine and sometimes feces through her vagina.” These young women are then usually abandoned by their husbands – “scorned, bewildered, humiliated and desolate, often feeling cursed by God.” And to repair their bodies and their lives? A $300 surgery that takes 20 minutes. Wow.
I’m coming at this three months after an amazing birth of my second child, a birth complete with a doula and a midwife at a local birthing center. It makes me think if I wasn’t running an invitation company, I would love to go back to medical school, learn stuff, and then help women in this way. But – I don’t have a medical degree, can’t do medical school right now, so what I can do is this. We’re running a free invitation envelope printing promotion through Smock. Buy a letterpress invitation set, get free envelope printing on your outer envelopes through December 31, 2009. This saves you about $300 for a quantity of 100 invitations. Sure, you can pocket the money, or use it to buy some nice organic sheets, or shoes, or books, or – you can donate the savings to the Worldwide Fistula Fund (or pick another cause that you care about) and really make a difference in someone’s life. Even if you’re not shopping for invitations – make a difference, forgo that Starbucks coffee for a while, and then make a donation. Read more about what you can do to help those suffering from fistula on Nicholas Kristof’s blog.
Here at Smock, we absolutely love Stationery Trends a fabulous trade magazine dedicated to all things stationery and paper. This year we were thrilled to be featured in Stationery Trends several times, including a piece about our double-sided 100% post consumer recycled gift wrap in our Calliope design in the winter issue…
In May, with the National Stationery Show fast approaching and just in time for Smock’s first birthday, we were completely excited to see one of our letterpress birthday cards, our Happy Happy Birthday to You card, on the cover of the spring 2009 issue of Stationery Trends! Coincidentally, the magazine was also celebrating their first birthday and wanted to showcase a great birthday card on the cover. We’re sincerely honored that they chose one of ours! Inside that same issue, they also showcased a beautiful customization of one of our letterpress wedding invitation designs, Rhon, which we printed as a letterpress bat mitzvah invitation.
Thank you so much to the folks at Stationery Trends for a great publication and for continually supporting Smock!
Finally, the moment you’ve been waiting for breathlessly for weeks – it’s time to wrap up our first ever Smock Design Contest by sharing our first place winner! This absolutely stunning customization, brought to us by our friends at Real Card Company in Seattle, was the clear favorite, taking our ever-popular Rhon letterpress wedding invitation design and completely reinventing it into something extraordinarily special. We loved it before we even printed it and seeing is believing – the end result is truly beautiful! It was a real favorite of Smock’s Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler. From the soft romantic colors, pewter and wisteria, to the asymmetrical layout featuring a unique variation of the Rhon floral motif and horizontal orientation, Amy loved how this design was truly personalized to make a one of a kind creation.
Letterpress printed in soft wisteria and pewter inks, this invitation also features chic patterned backing in our rowe pattern in pewter.
While the letterpress invitation itself was printed in 2-color letterpress, the reply card was letterpress printed in 1-color in pewter ink. We love the play between colors and patterns in this incredible set – it’s both elegant and formal, but still fun and just a touch modern. A huge thank you to Real Card Company for collaborating with us on this incredible customization and congratulations on winning the first Smock Design Contest!
For more fabulous customizations of Smock’s letterpress wedding invitations, check out the rest of the honorees in our Smock Design Contest for incredible inspiration!
The second runner-up in our Smock Design Contest is this inspired Rhon customization, a beautiful suite of pieces in tangerine and taupe, from The Write Image in Salt Lake City. Smock’s Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler, fell in love with the sophisticated color palette and the use of our beautiful Smock Spencerian calligraphy font. With the leaves changing rapidly in Upstate NY, we think it’s the perfect letterpress invitation set for a charming fall wedding.
The letterpress reply cards feature 1-color letterpress, printed in taupe. Not only is it really chic, but it’s also a great option for keeping letterpress more affordable. We always suggest this as a great way to save money without losing a bit of style.
And we all know that nothing says “thank you” quite like customized letterpress thank you cards to coordinate with your letterpress invitations. These letterpress thank you notes are especially beautiful and definitely among our recent favorites to print. (See more of our favorite letterpress thank you cards.)
Thank you so much to our friends at The Write Image for sending us this beautiful letterpress customization! We’re winding down on revealing the winners of our Smock design contest so stay tuned – the last two honorees are absolutely incredible customizations!
Like the first honorable mention from Judy Paulen Designs in our recent Smock Design Contest, we were completely thrilled at the opportunity to print this unique customization of our Burstell letterpress wedding invitation design. Using custom inks in a brilliant green and vibrant pink, it’s paired with a chic custom folio for a total package that is nothing short of show-stopping. Mixing our payette pattern on the exterior and our sinclair pattern on the interior, the folio is bright, modern and playful. Folio inserts included a fabulous letterpress events card detailing all of the weekend wedding events for the convenience of guests, particularly appropriate for this destination wedding in Jamaica.
Once again, thank you to Judy Paulen Designs for dreaming up this exciting customization – it was such a pleasure for us to print these fabulous letterpress wedding invitations!
The first of two honorable mentions in our Smock Design Contest brought to us by Judy Paulen Designs at Bloomingdale’s in New York, we’re completely in love with this chic customization of our Engadine letterpress wedding invitation design. It’s printed in elegant wisteria and pewter inks and features our playful Etienne and Shaw fonts for a finished design that is the perfect blend of traditional elegance and modern sophistication. The set also includes a really lovely letterpress reception card that makes the most of a play between the script Etienne font and the clean look of the sans serif Shaw font. It’s minimal and simple, but still fresh and completely chic.
Thanks so much to our friends at Judy Paulen for sending us this beautiful customization!
It’s not every day that we get to print an insanely beautiful 3-color letterpress wedding invitation and this one, a customization of our Engadine design and honoree in our Smock Design Contest from Kate’s Paperie, is just that – insanely beautiful. Printed in soft cream, verbena and periwinkle inks, this lovely letterpress wedding invitation is truly one of a kind. Using our Smock Spencerian calligraphy font in verbena and our Stockton serif font in periwinkle, this customization feels both bold and modern yet soft and pretty. Opting to use the Engadine leaf motif at the top of the invitation as opposed to in the lower corner as in the original design further personalizes the invitation, making it a true reflection of the couple and their wedding.
Thanks so much to our friends at Kate’s Paperie for sending along this customization – we always love the opportunity to print a really fabulous 3-color letterpress wedding invitation!
This next runner up in our Smock Design Contest is a true customization, blending all of the beauty of both our Nevis and Vettore letterpress invitation designs into one incredible invitation suite. Brought to us by our friends at Arabesque in Naples, Florida, this customization was a true pleasure for us to print. With an exciting mixing and matching of colors, patterns and designs, this set is truly unique and exudes an undeniable elegance.
The letterpress invitation itself is our Vettore design, printed in soft lake and midnight inks. The design was shifted to have a vertical orientation and the couple opted for pattern backing in our willoughby pattern in lake. With corner rounding and gold edge painting, every detail was thoughtfully considered. The result? An absolute show-stopping letterpress invitation that we completely love.
Switching it up, the letterpress reception card is in our Nevis design in the same midnight and lake inks, with pattern backing in our seneca pattern. The same corner rounding and gold edge painting make this card just as classically chic as the invitation itself.
The letterpress reply card is once again in our Vettore design, paired with an envelope liner in our seneca pattern printed in lake to match the pattern backing of the letterpress reception card. The careful pairing of colors and patterns helps this invitation set shine, a truly beautiful and unique reflection of the couple and their wedding.
Thank you so very much to the folks at Arabesque for the privilege to print such an incredible customization. Congratulations on being one of our Smock Design Contest winners!