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Palmes / Fitzroy invitations in Copper Shine Foil Stamping

Printed for our friends over at Paper and Chocolate, this blending of Palmes and Fitzroy features gorgeous copper shine foil stamping.  Copper foil sometimes tends to get the cold shoulder while Gold foil gets all the love, but really copper has an amazing richness and uniqueness that sets it apart beautifully from the Golden crowd.

foil: copper shine | paper: 2-ply ivory | fonts: cranbrook block + plaza calligraphy font | printing: foil stamping | invite size: s8 | corner rounding | envelope liner: metallic champagne | customization #: 15860

Foil wedding invitations in copper shine

Classic Black on White Letterpress Wedding Invitations

Courtesy of Frances at Paper & Chocolate, this set focuses less on elaborate inks, but rather on showcasing the right design elements and embellishments. Opting for a single color sometimes frees up the budget to include the extra embellishment options like edge painting and envelope liners. Add to that some submitted artwork for a custom hang tag and you end up with a lovely invitation set.

ink: black | fonts: submitted artwork | paper: 2-ply white | printing: letterpress | edge painting in taupe | custom hang tag | liner: metallic camel | invite size: S7 | customization #: 15711 |

Letterpress wedding invitations with custom artwork

Dawson Letterpress Rehearsal Dinner Invitations

We were floored when we got this stunning Dawson rehearsal dinner invite from Paper & Chocolate. The set looks complete with a simple patterned offset envelope liner.

inks: espresso + robin egg | fonts: millicent + lazlo | paper: 1-ply white | printing: letterpress + offset | envelope liner: offset champlain in espresso | invite size: S8 | customization #: 15457 |

Letterpress and offset printing are a great combination in this Dawson letterpress invitation

Smock Trunk Show at Paper and Chocolate in Dallas on October 19!

We are thrilled to announce that our next trunk show will be at Paper and Chocolate in Dallas, Texas! Smock’s very own Jenna Wysokowski will be helping host the show along with Peggy Post (great-granddaughter-in-law of etiquette master Emily Post), who will be in the store Friday answering etiquette questions! Please call Paper and Chocolate if you have any questions or if you would like to schedule an appointment. We hope to see you there!

Smock Design Contest – Custom Letterpress Holiday Cards by Paper & Chocolate

Brought to us by the friendly folks at Paper & Chocolate in Dallas, the next honoree in our Smock Design Contest is a custom letterpress holiday card that was an absolute joy to print. The design was created using a Spencerian calligraphy motif from our Social Occasions album printed in red and grass inks. The patterned envelope liner uses our iznik pattern with patterned backing on the card itself in our sherbrooke pattern. The piece was then corner rounded and edge painted in red for a complete look that is incredibly festive and perfect for the holiday season.

Custom Letterpress Holiday Card by Smock

Patterned Backing and Patterned Envelope Liner by Smock

Red Edge Painting on Custom Letterpress Holiday Card

Custom Letterpress Holiday Cards

To learn more about Paper & Chocolate, check out their recent Smock Store Spotlight.

Letterpress Ceremony Programs

We’ve had the opportunity lately to print a lot of beautiful letterpress programs, tiny little books detailing order of events, wedding party members, and more. We love the personalized touch that letterpress programs bring to a celebration and can’t wait to print more.

Custom Letterpress Wedding Programs by Smock

Custom Letterpress Wedding Programs by Smock

This gorgeous letterpress program is our Lashar design with hand calligraphy accents printed in blind deboss and garden ink, printed for clients of our friends at Paper & Chocolate in Dallas. The inside pages are flat offset printed on our text weight bamboo paper.

Custom Letterpress Wedding Programs by Smock

A customization of our Vettore design, we printed this letterpress program cover in periwinkle and pewter inks for Paperwhirl in San Francisco.

Custom Letterpress Wedding Programs by Smock

Custom Letterpress Wedding Programs by Smock

This pocket-sized letterpress program was printed for Deborah of RSVP Today in Manhattan. The letterpress cover features the motif from our Rousseau pattern with flat offset printed pages. The cover and the pages are hole punched so they can be tied with ribbon.

Custom Letterpress Wedding Programs by Smock

Custom Letterpress Wedding Programs by Smock

This program was printed for the folks at Michelle’s Memos in Potomac, Maryland and features our Smock Spencerian calligraphy font. Both the covers and the insert pages are letterpress printed on our luxury bamboo paper for a beautiful stand-out program guests are sure not to leave behind.

Smock Custom Letterpress Holiday Cards

With Christmas and New Year’s Eve just around the corner, we wanted to share a few more of the lovely custom letterpress holiday cards and invitations we’ve been printing this season. The first is a custom letterpress holiday invitation, a piece we printed for our friends at Paper & Chocolate in Dallas. It is printed in festive red ink with red edge painting paired with an envelope lined in our iznik pattern in grass ink.

Letterpress Holiday Invitation by Smock

Letterpress Holiday Invitation by Smock

Letterpress Holiday Invitation with Edge Painting by Smock

This letterpress holiday card, brought to us by Cotton Idea Studio in Newport Beach, California,  features space to attach a photo and is printed in a unique holiday color combination of pool and spring inks. The card was then edge painted in pool.

Letterpress Holiday Card by Smock

Letterpress Holiday Card by Smock

These custom hang tags are the perfect holiday gift tags, printed for Buchanan Ink in Nashville. It is letterpress printed in spring ink then hole drilled and grommeted for the making of fabulous holiday packaging.

Letterpress Holiday Hang Tag by Smock

Smock Store Spotlight – Paper & Chocolate in Dallas

It’s pretty much a given that here at Smock we are absolutely in love with paper, but we also happen to have a great love for chocolate. Dark chocolate in particular. With that said, it should come as no great surprise that we are completely fascinated by the inspiration behind Vicki Petersen’s store, Paper & Chocolate, in Dallas. A store dedicated to two things we absolutely love? Heaven!

With a unique background in computer programming, later to become a CPA, Vicki’s dreams and passions came together in 2006 with the opening of Paper & Chocolate. Having always been a lover of paper and having taken several classes in calligraphy, letterpress and bookbinding, the time was finally right to make the leap and allow her creative side to take over. Offering a wide array of stationery, gift wrap, greeting cards and custom wedding invitations, alongside an incredible selection of gourmet chocolates, Paper & Chocolate is one of those places we could browse for hours.

Paper & Chocolate

As the idea for Paper & Chocolate was forming, Vicki had the opportunity to visit the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and with a true passion and love for bookbinding, she decided to open a store that would focus on paper and offer classes and workshops to visitors. The first location she found offered unique character and a great patio and fireplace, but sadly also came coupled with a lot of structural issues that resulted in her finding another location in a popular Dallas shopping district which boasts a great Art Deco theatre, the Inwood Theatre. However, during that time the concept for the store grew and, with the hope of one day including a café, Vicki took her husband’s suggestion and named her new venture Paper & Chocolate, after her two favorite things.

Inwood Theatre Near Paper & Chocolate

Today, Vicki loves working with brides to create the wedding invitations of their dreams and looks forward to the bustle of lunch time when working professionals in the area stop by to check out the shop while away from their desks. She even has a smaller press where is she able to give customers quick letterpress demonstrations and to share with them the true art form that is letterpress printing. If you’re ever in Dallas, you want to be sure to visit Vicki at Paper & Chocolate!

Paper & Chocolate

And, of course, we had to ask Vicki…

If you could describe your personality in letterpress, which Smock invitation would you be and why?
Vettore! I love the design, classic yet distinctive. The horizontal orientation makes it elegant and unique. The color choices are endless so for someone who always wants change it is perfect.

What’s your favorite chocolate treat? What’s the most unusual chocolate you’ve ever had?
I love our Wiseman House Wild Woman Truffle. It is dark chocolate at its best. I have to say I am a traditionalist so I love my chocolate to taste like chocolate. I don’t love the unusual chocolate flavors, but I love the sea salt chocolate-covered caramels by Fran’s.

What’s your top pick destinations for first time visitors to Dallas?
I think most people have a stereotype of Dallas that doesn’t fit the reality. We have an incredible art district centered around the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center so that is where I would start. In the evening, I would take a visitor to the Meyerson Symphony Center, a contemporary structure designed by I.M. Pei that has the feel of an old world concert hall with incredible acoustics. Of course, in between all that would be lunch and dinner at some of our well known restaurants, Stephen Pyles or Fearings, and then some smaller gems like Sharon Hage’s York Street Dallas or Nonna. The art district is growing and this fall our new opera house and performing arts center will be opening.

Where are your favorite places to shop?
The shopping in Dallas is outstanding so locally I usually shop at small shopping areas like Inwood Village, where we are located, Preston Center and for a large shopping center, NorthPark Center. Away from home I love the Pearl District in Portland and abroad, anywhere on the Left Bank in Paris, especially the Sunday organic market, Marché Raspail.

What’s the best vacation you’ve ever taken?
This is a tough question for me because I was able to spend a summer in London with my oldest daughter. I think I loved that most because we actually lived there and felt like we knew London and our neighborhood so much better because we lived, shopped and walked there every day without feeling like a tourist. Paris, however, is my favorite city so it is my favorite vacation spot.

What new trends in stationery and gifts are you in love with right now?
I am still in love with letterpress so every new design delights us and we love showing them to our customers. We also love the people are enjoying really beautiful gift wrapping for their gifts.

Can you describe the sweetest or most memorable card or stationery you’ve ever received?
Anything from my 3 year old grandson is what I love right now!

Thank you so much, Vicki, for giving us a glimpse into Paper & Chocolate – we can’t wait to make it to Dallas to come visit!

Paper & Chocolate (and Smock’s Rhon!) in Style Me Pretty’s Little Black Book

We were thrilled to hear that our favorite stationery store in Dallas, Paper & Chocolate, was chosen for Style Me Pretty’s Little Black Book, one of the best wedding resources out there — congratulations! Paper + Chocolate was one of the first stores to pick up Smock’s wedding album when we launched this May — not to mention it’s the best idea for a store. The thought of really good chocolate + really beautiful stationery always gets our hearts racing. We were super excited to see our Rhon wedding invitation on Paper + Chocolate’s Little Black Book page….