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Smock exhibits in New York City this week

Stop on by our booth at the New York International Gift Fair for an explosion of color August 13th to 18th. You can go home with beautiful Smock buttons or a DIY pinwheel kit, both made from our signature gift wrap. You will also witness our new letterpress and offset cards for September 2011—available NOWHERE else…yet! Careful the ink may still be wet on these ones. We hope to see you at booth #4162 at the Jacob Javits center during the show. Smock NYIGF Booth 2011

Better Homes and Gardens + House Beautiful

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 Design Contest – Custom Letterpress Social Notes from Francis-Orr

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!”

Custom Letterpress Social Notes

Letterpress Social Notes from Smock

Letterpress Social Notes with Lined Envelope

Smock Design Contest – Rhon Letterpress Wedding Invitations from The Write Image

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.

Smock Design Contest - Rhon Letterpress Wedding Invitations

Smock Design Contest - Rhon Letterpress Wedding Invitations

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.

Smock Design Contest - Rhon Letterpress Reply Card

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.)

Smock Design Contest - Rhon 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!

Smock Real Party – Madline’s First Birthday

Today we are thrilled to welcome a guest to the Smock blog, Seana, who recently hosted the most incredible first birthday party for her daughter Madeline. Inspired by the Smock letterpress party invitations she sent to guests, Seana crafted a beautifully handmade, eco-friendly party that has us dreaming up any number of excuses to host great parties. Without further ado, Seana shares with us more about Madeline’s fabulous birthday celebration…
Smock real party: a vibriant first birthday party
A couple months after my daughter Madeline was born, I was perusing the web for eco-friendly paper companies who had cute birth announcements. I came across Smock and fell in love with the Horsey stationery suite. I decided right then and there they would be the invitations for my daughter’s 1st birthday party. Needless to say, I never actually sent out birth announcements (I know, bad mom!) but as Madeline’s June thirtieth birthday was approaching, I went back to Smock and bought the invites along with the matching Delft correspondence cards for thank you notes. They became my inspiration for her party! I went with an aqua and coral color scheme and started planning the decorations, cake and menu.
Smock real party: a vibriant first birthday party
It is very important to our family that we make as little impact on our environment as possible so Madeline’s party was planned with that in mind. On my home computer, I designed and printed the happy birthday banner and the party favor nametags. I bought some scrap fabrics and ribbons in coordinating colors in order to make the flag banners and “doilies”. One of my favorite projects was the picture banner. I made a fabric flag banner but left some extra space between the flags, there I used graphic clothes pins to hang home printed pictures of Madeline starting at birth and on through her first year. There won’t be a birthday party for Madeline every year but I will continue to hang the birthday banner, I’ll just change out the number.  I will also continue to hang the picture banner, switching out photos for ones from the year we are celebrating. It will become a birthday decoration tradition and it’s much better to re-use than to buy new every year.
Smock real party: a vibriant first birthday party
The cake, cookies and mini smash cake were fantastic! I went to this really great bakery right down the street from our home in Chicago, The Bleeding Heart Bakery. It is an organic bakery known for their innovative designs and the environmentally responsible way in which they operate their business. I brought in the invites and thank you cards for inspiration and they came up with a delicious carrot cake with the invitation horsey on it. They also made the bird cookies to look like the bird sweetly perched on the horsey’s back. Madeline’s mini smash cake was actually sweetened with agave nectar instead of sugar, a request I made so as to curb that sugar overload for such a small body, and they were happy to oblige.
Smock real party: a vibriant first birthday party
I will admit that if there is a way that I can get out of a lot of clean up after a party, I am all for it. One way is to use disposable utensils, plates and napkins. Unfortunately using all of that plastic is just not good for the earth so I set out to find some environmentally ways to make the party easier without compromising quality. After doing my research I found some great alternatives. We used disposable, compostable bamboo plates made by the company Bambu and we used disposable, biodegradable utensils made from potato, yes potato! Called Potatoware, these utensils were strong, in fact a lot less brittle than your regular plastic kind. I really couldn’t justify using paper napkins, so we went with cloth, but that was ok, it gave me another excuse to add some color by tying the rolled utensils with ribbon.

The simple menu consisted of:

• Green salad made from our CSA lettuce, organic cherry tomatoes, onions and artichokes all topped with a goddess dressing.

• Fruit salad made up of our CSA strawberries, in-season organic blueberries and in-season cantaloupe.

• Cheeseburgers with condiments also coming from our CSA.

It’s amazing how you can have a fairly simple meal taste SO good just by using fresh, in-season local food.

Smock real party: a vibriant first birthday party

It was not a very large party, just a few of our close friends and their kids but it was such a nice way to get together to celebrate our little girl’s first year. Madeline is the joy of our lives; she is such a happy one year old and she thoroughly enjoyed her party. We look forward to many more birthdays in the future!

Thank you, Seana, for sharing Madeline’s party celebration with us – we are so completely inspired! And, a big Happy Birthday to Madeline from all of us at Smock!

Letterpress Thank You Notes

We can’t think of anything that shows gratitude and appreciation more than a beautiful hand written note on a lovely letterpress thank you card printed on soft bamboo paper. We’ve printed a few lately that have left us dreaming of mailboxes full of sweet sentiments on pretty letterpress cards and could not resist sharing them.

Rhon - Thank You Note

Brought to us by Perfectly Personal by Jen in Chappaqua, New York, this Rhon thank you note is printed in saffron ink on ivory. This card is sunny and bright and sure to bring smiles to the faces of loved ones.

Chasseral - Thank You Card

Printed in pearl and clover, these pretty thank you cards are our Chasseral design. Created by Paper Dolls of Saratoga in Saratoga Springs, New York, these note cards are the perfect way to thank loved ones for sharing in your celebration.

Letterpress Folded Thank You Card

Using our Cavall design in 1-color letterpress, printed in raspberry ink, these letterpress thank you cards were brought to us by No Regrets in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. Sitting down to write thank you notes can only be considered delightful with cards as lovely as these.

Sweet custom letterpress stationery – gold edging!

This was a great idea we hadn’t seen before — custom letterpress stationery in the size of a reply card. It seems the PERFECT size to us — sweetly intimate, and just enough room to write a nice personal note (but not too much room!). An extra bonus: it uses less paper than larger social stationery cards (eco!), which also makes it less expensive (nice!). This letterpress stationery is in our Haddington invitation design, using our Smock Spencercian fonts (based on our favorite calligrapher’s penmanship). And the gold edge painting! Oh, gold edge painting makes us swoon — we would like to edge everything we could in gold right now. It adds such an elegant finish to a card. Sent to us by our friends The Write Image in Rockville, Maryland.
Sweet letterpress custom stationery - by Smock
Gold edge painting on a letterpress thank you note - by Smock

Smock letterpress cards in Body + Soul, More, and Green Daily

What a thrill to find Smock’s Garden letterpress thank you cards in this month’s issue of Body + Soul! I don’t read a whole of magazines, but Body + Soul is one of the few that I subscribe too (in part because I really want a Life Coach!) — I love their laid back, eco approach and recipes involving kale. Body + Soul writes, “The newly launched Smock makes its quirk graphic letterpress stationery from sustainable bamboo paper printed with vegetable, low-VOC inks.” We also were excited to have our Delft letterpress notecards in the December 2008 / January 2009 issue of More magazine (they call us “pretty and principled,”) and to see Smock as the tip of the day at Green Daily (they featured our holiday cards — hooray!).
Smock letterpress thank you cards in Body + Soul
Smock letterpress cards in More magazine

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