Today we’re extending an overdue shot out to two of our favorite shelter magazines for featuring Smock! First up, Smock’s Creative Director, Amy Graham Stigler, was featured in an incredible interview and fashion spread in Better Homes and Gardens. She was whisked off to New York City where she was a model for a day, sharing her love for vintage accessories and her inspiration for all things Smock. You can read more about her Better Homes and Gardens photo shoot on our blog.

That same month, our Bourbon letterpress thank you card was featured in a great round up of thank you cards in House Beautiful.

Thanks so much to two of our favorite magazines for including Smock in such fabulous issues!

Smock was recently featured in two of our favorite trade magazines. Greetings Etc. did a lovely article featuring our website. They talked about the design and functionality of our site and also covered a bit about our company history, sharing insight from co-owners Debbie Urbanski and Harold Kyle.

Giftware News interviewed us about our company history, our love for letterpress and our eco initiatives. They also featured a photo of our Lamby letterpress greeting card. Thanks to both Giftware News and Greetings Etc. for featuring Smock – it’s such a pleasure to be recognized by our favorite publications!

We were thrilled to find out this week that we’ve been nominated for The Poppies, a fabulous collection of awards recognizing handmade artisans sponsored by one of our favorite blogs, Poppytalk. Smock is nominated in the category of Favourite Handmade Papergoods alongside some of our favorite stationers and it’s an honor to be included. Be sure to visit Poppytalk to vote in all the categories for your favorite artists, crafters, stationers and photographers. Voting is open until February 5. Thank you so much to the folks at Poppytalk for including us!

Smock designer, Amy Graham Stigler, was thrilled to be whisked off to New York City this fall for a photo shoot with Better Homes and Gardens. The photo spread can be found in the December issue of the magazine, where she he talks about her design inspiration and her love for stationery. Today she’s sharing her behind the scenes take of what the experience was like in front of the camera.

The day was such a whirlwind. Since it was the first week back to school for my kids the trip was condensed – I flew out to NYC Thursday afternoon and flew back Friday evening. The shoot was all day Friday in Chelsea. The space was a beautiful loft overlooking the Hudson. As I arrived a few minutes early I snuck out on this little side porch, sipped coffee and enjoyed the spectacular view. It was heavenly. After my little moment of peace in the morning the rest of the day was a flurry of activity and commotion. Racks and racks (and racks) of clothes were rolled in. Shoes and jewelry and make up was set out and organized. The set was built from ground up; painting and all. The photographers, the art directors, the prop stylists (etc etc)…all did their thing.

My main liason’s were Jonny Lichtenstein, the fashion stylist, and Better Homes and Gardens Editor Kelly Phillips, and they were both really special talented people. And they were very encouraging…since I really had no idea what I was doing, especially when it came to “modeling.” Probably the most notable thing about my day was just that there were so many people buzzing around, attending to me. At one point I was being interviewed, make up was being applied, my clothes were being adjusted, shoes were being put on and earrings were being clipped…simultaneously. It just struck me as so unique really since, with three kids, I am usually the one attending rather than being attended to. The actual photography-taking turned out to be quite fun (and a bit silly – with a wind machine and all!)…despite the fact that I really (really) don’t love having my photograph taken.

Like my three year old daughter, I actually love to play dress up. I love clothes and shoes and I absolutely adore jewelry and accessories. I am a vintage girl so I usually play with old stuff but it was fun to see what is out there right now. I am generally not a big trend watcher but I definitely got a glimpse of what is going on in fashion right now by being a part of the shoot. Thankfully, tights are in because I am such a fan. And I live in Wisconsin where they are essential this time of year.

What was your favorite part about your experience with BHG?

Definitely the process. It was such a unique experience…so different from my usual workday – FAR more social. The people I met were sooo kind and fun. And I love NYC.

BHG asked you a little bit about your design inspiration – can you share what’s inspiring you now as we head into 2010?

I am invoking Milton Avery, one of my favorite favorite painters. Think graphic and strong and colorful.

For all of the fun, check out the December issue of Better Homes and Gardens and Happy New Year from all of your friends at Smock!

At Smock, it truly never ceases to be incredibly exciting for us to be featured in some of our favorite publications. So you can imagine how thrilled we were to be featured in a recent issue of Inside Weddings, one of our favorite wedding magazines. Our Haddington letterpress wedding invitations were featured, showcasing our love for calligraphy and fabulous patterned envelope liners.

Natural Home featured some of our letterpress greeting cards, which are sustainably printed on our bamboo paper and paired with cute patterned envelopes.

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote an article about cool papers including Smock’s bamboo paper and showcased one of our letterpress birthday cards.

Smock was also mentioned in a cute piece in Victoria Magazine featuring great business cards and calling cards. Our Smock letterpress business cards were featured alongside some other fabulous calling card designs.

Thank you to our friends at Inside Weddings, Natural Home, Victoria Magazine and The Wall Street Journal for mentioning Smock! It’s an honor to be included.

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!

Smock’s letterpress wedding invitations were recently featured in one of our favorite wedding magazines, New York Magazine Weddings! They showcased both a customization of our Engadine letterpress invitation…

and our Cavall letterpress reply card!

Smock is also featured in the current issue of another favorite, Bridal Guide, where they highlighted our Aberdeen letterpress invitation as a favorite eco-friendly invitation design.

We are completely thrilled to be featured in such fabulous magazines and send a big thank you to New York Magazine Weddings and Bridal Guide. It is always so fun to see Smock designs in print!

Good is an eco magazine, one of my favorite eco reads. Subscribe to this magazine and 100% of your subscription is donated to nonprofits doing good. And if that isn’t convincing enough, this magazine has amazing photography and really cool graphs (“the most used subways in the United States and the world, showed in graphic form”), as well as inspiring profiles of people who are helping change the world for the better. Though I wish they trusted their readers to have a longer attention span (lots of short 1/2 page or 1 page articles), it’s a thought provoking read that nudges you to live your life better – not in the self-development sense (10 ways to look better, etc.), but living your life in a way that helps others and the world. One of the most recent issues was devoted to transportation, and by the end of it, it was hard not to say “okay, okay, I’ll ride my bike more, I’ll look at bus routes differently, okay, I’ll do it!” This issue included drawings from grade school students on transportation of the future (including “traveling legs’), a neat article on “casual carpooling” in the Bay Area, and the cool buses of Bogota. Good is just that, good, and one you should definitely check out.

[Good]

It may go without saying, but around here we are absolutely in love with letterpress business cards – they have become one of our favorite things to print! Letterpress business cards make a lasting first impression, so we’re always excited to design and print them. These particular cards are among our favorites of those we’ve recently printed. Completely custom, featuring the logo of one of our favorite wedding and lifestyle blogs, Elizabeth Anne Designs, these were printed for publisher Ami Price. They are on beautiful 2-ply bamboo paper in 1-color letterpress in classic black ink, paired with edge painting in our wisteria ink that adds just a touch of whimsy. These cards pay homage to classic calling cards, while still being a bit unexpected and fresh. Ami chose a slightly scaled down size that makes them truly unique and one of a kind. We love them!

You probably already know that here at Smock, printing gorgeous letterpress invitations makes us absolutely giddy. With that said, the opportunity to print the letterpress invitations, escort cards and menus for the recent Modern Bride Trendsetters Awards Dinner was a sincere honor and so much fun! Printing beautiful things is what makes us excited about what we do everyday, but being able to print the invitations for such a fabulous event, honoring amazing wedding professionals we truly admire, was especially exciting.

The letterpress invitation to kick off the event was our Aberdeen design in grass and black inks paired with an envelope liner in our sottern pattern in a custom hot pink ink. Ensuring no detail was forgotten, the invitations were also corner rounded and edge painted in grass ink to make for a truly show-stopping invitation. How exciting would it be to get something this fun in the mail?

The letterpress menus and letterpress escort cards were also our Aberdeen design, printed in black and the same custom hot pink color. They were edge painted in gold and all of the pieces, including the invitation, featured pattern backing in our oesa pattern. We loved working with the editors of Modern Bride to create these pieces and love the final look – perfectly sophisticated, cheerful and undeniably celebratory.

This photo by Bee Kim, founder of Weddingbee and a Trendsetter honoree, shows the beautiful table design at the awards dinner where you can even see the letterpress menus at each place setting – talk about thrilling! You can read all about the fabulous time had at the awards dinner on Weddingbee PRO and on Wedded Bits, the Modern Bride magazine blog.