We are crazy in love with this great customization of our Lashar design, submitted by our friend Libby from Byrd + Bleecker in Fort Worth, Texas (who we had the joy of seeing last week when she came up for a visit – see the fabulous letterpress coasters made for her while she was here on Boxcar’s blog!).  We can’t get enough of the creative ways she uses our designs and motifs to create unique invitations for the lucky couples that walk into her store!

ink: midnight + peacock | fonts: engravers + engravers gothic | paper: 1-ply white | printing: offset | invite size: s-8 |

by Sarah Walroth, In-House Designer.

With the holiday engagement season in full swing, the time to start thinking about fabulous letterpress save the dates to kick of the festivities is drawing near! These awesome save the dates are a custom design from Rugg Road Paper Co. in Boston, featuring our champlain pattern as a letterpress motif. Printed in midnight and sky inks, they also feature sky edge painting for a chic, preppy look that we completely love.

Brought to us by Perfectly Personal by Jen in Chappaqua, New York our next Smock Design Contest honoree is a fabulous custom letterpress bar mitzvah invitation. Printed on our white bamboo paper, the design is letterpress printed in blind deboss and midnight ink, corner rounded, and features an envelope lined in our sinclair pattern in taupe. A letterpress insert invites Mikey’s friends to celebrate with him at a party later in the evening. We love the look of this set – it’s masculine, youthful and sets the perfect tone for this celebration.

A while back we featured Andrea and John’s penguin motif letterpress save the dates, which we printed for our friends at Union Street Papery in San Francisco and today we’re excited to share their invitations! The charming custom penguin motif is carried throughout the invitation suite, letterpress printed in grass and midnight inks. Both the invitation envelope and the cute letterpress escort cards feature envelope liners in our Seneca pattern in grass, making for a fun, preppy look. Thanks so much to the folks at Union Street Papery for working with us on such a cool design!

Brought to us by our friends at Francis-Orr in Corona del Mar, California we just love this ocean inspired letterpress invitation suite, printed for a destination 50th birthday party! It is a custom design featuring motifs from our Social Occasions album in fun tropical colors of midnight and papaya. The letterpress invitations, events cards, and reply cards were tucked inside a patterned folio featuring our Willoughby pattern on the interior and a seahorse on the exterior, both printed in midnight. To bring it all together, the envelope was lined in Willoughby in papaya for a complete package that is bright, festive and just perfect for a fun-filled birthday getaway.

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!”

It’s a bit ironic that we have sun and summer on the brain today given the blinding snow currently falling over Central New York, but our dreams of sunshine can’t be deterred – we can’t wait for spring to get here! This time of year we start to get a lot of inquiries about invitation designs particularly well-suited to waterfront, beach or destination weddings so we thought we’d dig up some of our favorites from last year to share with you. There’s nothing like the promise of warm summer breezes to get you inspired, snow or no snow.

This first invitation is our Lashar design printed in pewter ink using our Smock Spencerian calligraphy font. The back of the letterpress invitation features gorgeous patterned backing printed in sea mist in our lesina pattern.

This invitation was a beautiful custom version of our Haddington design, printed in espresso ink and blind deboss. The palm tree motif was a custom addition to the design, making it perfect for an elegant destination wedding.

Brought to us by our friends at Peabody Papers in Columbus, Ohio, this version of our popular Vettore design was printed in midnight and seamist inks. The flourishes from the Vettore design were modified in such a way that they remind us of water and waves without being literal.

This custom version of our Engadine design was printed for the folks at Luxe Expressions in Atlanta. It’s a letterpress reply postcard printed in midnight and seamist that features pretty ocean-themed motifs. The card also includes space for guests to reply to multiple weekend events, which is a great option when designing your stationery for a destination wedding.

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!

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!