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
We loved seeing our Rhon letterpress wedding invitation design in pewter and verbena inks pop up in this beautiful inspiration board featured here on The Inspired Bride yesterday. We think this kind of sunshine-filled inspiration is perfect for a vibrant summer affair and we extend a big thank you to Maddy of The Inspired Bride for including Smock! Also, The Inspired Bride is celebrating the launch of their beautiful new site, so be sure to pop over and visit for lots of fabulous ideas sure to inspire.
{Inspiration Board via The Inspired Bride}
Inspiration Board Credits:
Decorated Tent, The Knot
Placecards, Martha Stewart Weddings
Groom’s Tie and Boutonniere, The Knot
Bridesmaid’s Dress, Jenny Yoo
Table Card, The Knot
Planter Decor, The Knot
Cake, Cake Girls
Invitation, Smock
Honey Jar Favor, The Knot
The Miami Herald featured Smock this week and it was so exciting. We were blown away by their amazing compliments – we love when others are as excited about what we do as us! According to the Miami Herald, our bamboo “paper’s texture is soft and elegant, and the impressions made with the cast-iron presses create a quality only possible with a craft requiring the personal attention to every detail provided by Smock’s employees – successfully mixing an antique art with contemporary charm.”
BRIDES magazine blog also mentioned Smock recently, citing our suggestions for ways to trim costs while selecting letterpress wedding invitations. Looking for ideas to keep letterpress budget-friendly? Consider using 1 ink color and opting for a reply postcard instead of a traditional reply card with envelope – both are sure to save you money without sacrificing great design.
Style Me Pretty, one of our absolute favorite wedding blogs, featured our new letterpress wedding invitation designs, recently unveiled at the 2009 National Stationery Show. Style Me Pretty also hosted a giveaway featuring our latest letterpress thank you card designs, perfect for both bridal and everyday correspondence. Thank you, Abby, for sharing our new designs with your readers! It’s always a thrill to see our letterpress wedding invitations and letterpress cards pop up in fabulous places!
Other great Smock mentions: Great photos of Smock’s National Stationery Show booth on RiverDog Prints | Maria from Ritzy Bee visits Smock at NSS | New Smock Everyday cards at NSS on design*sponge | According to Hip Hostess, Smock makes lovely letterpress | Nicole of a little sussy lists Smock as one of her favorite vendors at NSS | Smock sponsors the Brooklyn Pop Up Wedding Series | Kristen of paper crave features Smock’s new letterpress Everyday cards | New Smock letterpress Everyday cards on Freshly Blended | Traditionally Modern Designs features Smock’s letterpress cards on sustainable bamboo paper | My Mom Shops features Smock at the National Stationery Show
Having launched at last year’s National Stationery Show, making the trip to New York City for the stationery show this year was especially fun for the Smock team! It was such an incredible opportunity to meet with the awesome stores we work with daily, to introduce ourselves to new stores and to reconnect with friends old and new in the world of paper and letterpress. Plus we were super excited to introduce all of our new designs including new Everyday letterpress cards and gift wrap, three new letterpress wedding invitation designs, and a brand new letterpress and offset Social Occasions album, full of beautifully customizable calling cards, letterhead, hang tags, correspondence cards and social occasion invitations.
Smock’s Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler, did an amazing job ensuring Smock’s booth was absolutely beautiful – it was such a nice place to be during the show as we introduced our many visitors to Smock! It was a lot of hard work pulling the booth together at the Javitz Center, but luckily we had co-owner Harold on the team to make sure everything went smoothly. And, of course, we couldn’t leave Syracuse without making sure to bring along our #1 Smock team member, Jasper, who is always generous with his smiles and two year old charm.
Thank you so much to everyone who came to visit Smock at the National Stationery Show! For everyone who wasn’t able to be in New York, we have more photos and so many exciting new letterpress designs to share soon!
These letterpress wedding invitations, paired with a custom folio, are truly exceptional, one of those amazing pieces we look forward to printing. The invitation is our Lashar design boasting a very regal gold and eggplant ink color combination with custom calligraphy accents in Clermont paired with our Cooper font in all caps. The folio features our Sottern pattern in gold on the exterior and our Sinclair pattern in eggplant on the interior. The envelope liner is just as pretty, showcasing our ever popular Seneca Stripe pattern in gold for a complete package that is nothing short of extraordinary. Wouldn’t you just love to have one of these beautiful creations land in your mail box?
Thank you to Inklinations in Manhasset, NY for sending us this beautiful wedding invitation customization!
In keeping with our existing collection of fully customizable letterpress wedding invitations, Smock is unveiling three new beautiful wedding invitations designs at the 2009 National Stationery Show, which kicks off in just two days! Each new design is completely chic and completely adaptable by playing with colors, fonts, patterns, envelope linings, edge painting and other embellishments. Looking for a wedding invitation that is uniquely yours and at the same time the most elegant and eco-friendly of designs? Smock has the perfect invitation for the wedding of your dreams. Visit our website to find a Smock wedding dealer near you and be sure to check out some of the great customizations Smock has printed this past year!
{New Smock letterpress wedding invitation designs -Cindrel, Sabion and Dorset}
Our new letterpress designs introduce front patterning {as seen above in Sabion and Dorset}, which will allow for even further customization when selecting your wedding invitations in addition to the ever popular back patterning that make Smock’s letterpress wedding invitations so very special. Cindrel and Dorset also showcase Smock’s exclusive calligraphy fonts, Smock Clermont and Smock Spencerian, based on the beautiful calligraphy of our master calligrapher, Debi Zeinert of Blooming Quill.
Papery & Cakery is a stationery and patisserie boutique in Boca Raton, Florida that we’re proud to say offers Smock’s letterpress wedding invitations. This week we had the great pleasure of being featured in their newsletter and also on their lovely blog as newlyweds Laura and Hugo used our Lashar design as the invitations to their recent wedding in Honduras. We were blown away at the amazingly beautiful details of their event and we just had to share them with you. Check out that gorgeous cake!
{Photos by Janeth Castillo}
Laura and Hugo’s invitations featured a truly timeless and elegant combination of espresso ink paired with a letterpress blind deboss and beautiful spring green envelope liners in our Champlain pattern. Letterpress printed on our white bamboo paper, the look is crisp and completely sophisticated.
Laura and Hugo also opted for letterpress printed ceremony program covers, which are absolutely stunning. All of their pieces were printed in Spanish for their Honduras event.
Thank you so much to Laura, Hugo and Niki of Paper & Cakery for letting us share your amazing wedding. Congratulations and best wishes from all of us at Smock!
At Smock we love getting to work with incredible shops around the country and across the globe and ecoEMPORIUM in Atlanta is just one of those shops we wish we could hang out in all day long. Owned and operated by Carol Held, ecoEMPORIUM is Atlanta’s premiere destination for all things eco, including Smock’s letterpress wedding invitations, and is dedicated to introducing “customers to earth-friendly products with style, regardless of your shade of green.” We love it!
Carol grew up in South Florida where she inherited a love for gardening, landscaping and nature from her father. As a child she remembers being cautioned by her grandfather to always turn off the faucet while brushing her teeth, because someday the world would run out of safe drinking water. It seems even in the 1950s, Carol’s family was aware of greater environmental issues. According to Carol, “I always had a feeling that my purpose in life was to help people in some way but never knew what it was and as I’ve grown older it was getting to the point that I was afraid I would never know.”
About three years ago, Carol’s husband lost his job of 23 years and set up a new home office so he could work as a consultant, about which time Carol began experiencing health issues. After visiting several health professionals and turning to home inspection professionals, she was able to track her health problems back to the formaldehyde in her husbands new office furniture and the resulting off gassing. For her, it was a realization that proved life changing. As she delved into researching various toxins and their existence in numerous household products, Carol grew increasingly concerned, especially having just found out she was about to be a grandmother for the first time. Understanding that such toxins and chemicals can wreak havoc on the body and pose threats to the nervous system and even cause disease, Carol knew she had finally found her way of helping people. Many months of research went into selecting the products and companies Carol represents at ecoEMPORIUM, where she is not only shop owner, but also educator and friend.
Carol encourages friends, family and customers alike to find small ways to make a difference. Whether it be using shower timers, glass straws, opting to use filtered stainless steel water bottles instead of plastic, considering bio-degradable diapers, or even something as simple as the advice of her grandfather to turn off the water when brushing your teeth, she recognizes that everyone is capable of making a difference with simple everyday changes in their habits.
Carol makes educating the public a priority and often hosts great workshops on such topics as designing and setting up organic baby nurseries. Her latest endeavor is the creation of an eco wedding department, where she happily features Smock’s letterpress wedding invitations. We are thrilled to be among the other great products offered at ecoEMPORIUM!
As usual we just had to know more…
If you could describe your personality in letterpress, which Smock invitation would you be and why? My favorite would have to be Nevis. I’m wild about ivory and black and love the Tennyson & Hawthorne fonts With rounded corners and edge painting in blush ink, it makes it so sophisticated. If I could get married all over again my wedding would be entirely ivory and black. The quality of Smock is in a category all it’s own…everyone just loves the beauty and quality.
What’s your top pick destination for first time travelers to Atlanta?
Atlanta has so many wonderful things to do…but I’d have to say my favorite events are the Steeplechase, the Dogwood Festival, and the Atlanta Symphony’s Decorators Show House. All take place in April and May during our beautiful Atlanta springtime. My top destination for a first time traveler to Atlanta would be The Aquarium, The World of Coke and the High Museum of Art. Families will love Stone Mountain Park.
Where are your favorite places to shop?
My favorite places to shop in Atlanta are the shops in the Midtown West area of Atlanta. That’s where ecoEMPORIUM is located. It’s an old area of Atlanta that is being rebuilt using the bricks and steel of the previous buildings. It’s urban and chic with wonderful independent stores. Verde Home, Emily Amy Art Gallery, Ken Barber for men’s clothing and Toscano & Sons Italian Market are a few of my favorites. Of course, for the mall shoppers..nothing beats Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza.
Thank you so much, Carol, for allowing us this amazing sneak peek into the inspiration behind ecoEMPORIUM! Also, we are thrilled to let you know that Carol is going to be sharing some great tips and insight into how you can introduce a little green into your life in the coming weeks so make sure to stop back!
Vettore has long been one of our favorite letterpress wedding invitation designs and judging by its popularity, Smock customers agree! And as lovely as it is, it’s easy to see why so many people love Vettore!
The original Vettore design is printed in sea mist and midnight inks for a look that is romantic and a little bit vintage. The excitement of seeing how couples make the design their own never fades and we love some of the latest adaptations so much so that we just had to share them with you. How gorgeous are these?
Vettore printed in clover and midnight with a vertical orientation and pattern backing in our seneca pattern, brought to us by the folks at Peabody Papers in Columbus, Ohio. We love how this puts a fresh and modern spin on the design, especially with the extra special touch that comes from using our Smock Spencerian calligraphy font.
This incredible customization uses gold ink paired with blind deboss and it’s utterly sophisticated matched with the lined envelope in our clairveaux pattern printed in gold ink. A big thank you to Paper Chase in Margate, New Jersey for this classy take on Vettore!
We absolutely love edge painting and this lovely customization from Pearl Beach Paperie in Orlando, Florida is a perfect example of why. We love the eggplant and gold inks paired with the gold edge painting as it is so incredibly chic and luxurious.
Seeing what our awesome Smock stores dream up with their clients is thrilling for us and truly inspiring. We love seeing how creative and playful they can be with ink colors, embellishments and patterns and we can’t wait to share more great Smock customizations!
One of the things we most love about our Smock letterpress wedding invitations is the complete versatility in design. By selecting the patterns, envelope linings and ink colors of choice, a bride or groom can dream up a totally new version of a Smock design that is unique to their personality and their event. Lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of gorgeous adaptations of the lovely Vettore design and wanted to share one that we find particularly fun. The original Vettore design is printed in midnight and sea mist ink for a pretty, classic look.
In this Vettore customization, the couple chose mango and clover inks for a look that is much more modern and bold. By using calligraphy accents the design remains a bit traditional and yet completely updated.
The bold mango patterned backing in our Willoughby pattern is an exciting and unexpected touch when guests open the envelope, which is beautifully lined in clover Willoughby.
We adore this version of Vettore, customized by RSVP Studio in Toronto and their client, for its fun and festive nature. It’s somehow strikingly bold and quietly tradtional all at the same time and we couldn’t love it more.