We were thrilled to learn that the Amazon Conservation Association, one of the environmental groups that Smock supports, has started encouraging couples to bypass traditional wedding favors at their receptions and go eco instead. Instead of candied almonds, personalized mix CDs or other traditional less-green “keepsakes” for your guests, why not help save the Amazon rainforests (and help slow global warming) instead? For a $5 donation per guest, you can thank your loved ones with a contribution to help protect the Amazon. Couples will receive one beautiful favor card per two guests, sustainably letterpressed on our bamboo paper, to display on tables at their reception explaining how your donation has helped create a better livelihood for local communities and to help conserve the biological diversity of the Amazon basin. Because Smock wants to support the good work that ACA is doing, we donated the design and letterpress printing of the favor cards, which are based on our Engadine letterpress wedding invitations. Smock will gladly personalize these favor cards for free for those couples who have chosen Smock for their letterpress wedding invitations.

The Amazon rainforest is home to 30% of the plant and animal species on Earth and additionally, 20% of all fresh water on the planet flows through the basin’s rivers. Recognizing the importance of the Amazon rainforest to the greater ecological systems of the world as a source of countless foods, fibers and potential new medicines, the ACA works to protect these invaluable forests as they are facing increasing threats from slash and burn agriculture, wildlife poaching, mining, illegal logging, oil prospecting, and large development projects. Rainforests are also a vital force in shaping the world’s weather and climate patterns with the UN citing that 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions are related to tropical deforestation. It is estimated that at current rates, more than half of the Amazon rainforest may be destroyed or severely damaged by 2030. ACA is working together with local communities and partner organizations throughout the region to protect these precious forests.

How does your tax deductible donation help?

Your $25 donation can:

• Help a Brazil nut harvester achieve organic certification
• Plant 50 trees in a highland Andean community

Your $50 donation can:

• Help a community build a tree nursery for reforestation projects
• Help a Brazil nut harvester get legal title to the land they manage
• Sponsor an environmental education program for Peruvian schoolchildren

Your $150 donation can:

• Help protect the habitat of the giant river otter
• Support research on sustainable forest products such as natural dyes
• Fund a field expedition to study the Bolivian pampas
• Outfit a park ranger on the front lines of Amazonian conservation

Your $500 donation can:

• Train the next generation of Amazonian scientists: sponsor a Peruvian student’s research at one of our field stations
• Support clean power for Amazonian science: buy a solar panel to boost power at the Amazon’s most active research station
• Track long-term trends in Amazonian animal communities: support a month of surveys in the Los Amigos Conservation Concession

Your $1,000 donation can:

• Protect forest habitat for jaguars
• Help an indigenous community preserve its ancestral lands
• Buy a laptop for the Amazon’s most active research station, providing a young Peruvian researcher access to the Internet and online scientific literature
• Strengthen the front lines of Amazonian conservation: provide two months of salary and benefits for a park ranger at the Los Amigos Conservation Concession

You can learn more about the ACA’s environmental partners on their website and for more information about wedding favor donations and receiving your own letterpress favor cards through the ACA and Smock, contact Gena at info@amazonconservation.org.

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!

Here at Smock we get to work with some pretty cool people throwing some amazing parties, which we absolutely love. In fact we find it so much fun that we want to share those parties with everyone else! If you’re hosting a great brunch, baby or bridal shower, birthday party, anniversary celebration, or a fabulous spring kick-off barbecue, we want details! Email us at hello@smockpaper.mom and tell us about your event and you could be featured on Smock’s blog. Parties of all shapes, sizes, and themes are welcome! In the meantime, check out this fabulous baby shower at the incredible Thoughtful Day, a blog we positively adore.

We love this use of our adorable Liony letterpress invitations featuring hand calligraphy by our favorite calligrapher, Debi Zeinert of Blooming Quill, in Whimsy for a first birthday party. It’s simple and oh so sweet, and the perfect way to set the stage for a fantastic birthday celebration.

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.

Today we’re really excited to introduce one of the fabulous new stores Smock is working with in Hong Kong in our new Smock Store Spotlight feature. Julie Sung is the proprietor of Six Chancery Lane, the exclusive location of Smock’s letterpress wedding invitations in Hong Kong, and she happily shared some incredible insight and a look into her fabulous shop. Six Chancery Lane is a unique shop devoted to Julie’s handmade soaps and her love for letterpress, a combination we find especially fun.

Julie grew up in Taiwan, but spent many years in the U.S. when she was younger, having just recently moved to Hong Kong about five years ago. Her background includes experience in the media industry, in both television and movies, but her passion has always been design and creating things that are handmade. Julie shares, “I think I have found my calling with Six Chancery Lane – wonderful, thoughtful, handmade products and great designs just make me happy. I get so much satisfaction out of creating beautiful stationery for my clients or seeing them appreciate a beautifully packaged bar of our handmade soap.”

We were so intrigued by the concept of Six Chancery Lane as a soap and letterpress boutique that we just had to know more about Julie’s inspiration behind her lovely store…

Six Chancery Lane really is a reflection of who I am and what I love, bringing together my two passions – handmade soaps and letterpress – and combining it with a desire to share products that are unique, handcrafted, not mass-produced, environmentally-friendly, and beautiful, with people who care about the same things. Originally, I started making soaps myself when I couldn’t find anything suitable for my sensitive skin in retail stores. I immediately fell in love with the craft of soapmaking, ultimately spending countless hours in my kitchen researching, testing new recipes and improving upon existing ones, until I finally had to find more space! Our soaps are all made in-house at Six Chancery Lane from the very best ingredients and then individually wrapped in beautiful paper I have personally sourced from around the world. I fell in love with letterpress when I was planning my own wedding and discovered, to my dismay, that I could not find letterpress in Hong Kong. I decided to learn all I could about letterpress, through research and taking classes in the U.S. Through Six Chancery Lane, I have finally have a venue to bring beautiful letterpress cards and stationery to discerning brides and customers in Hong Kong.

And we just had to know…
If you could describe your personality in letterpress, which Smock invitation would you be and why?
I would have to choose “Haddington” in black and raspberry ink with a raspberry Champlain liner. It is simple, clean, and subtle; classic yet contemporary at the same time. The splash of bright color on a black and white background stands out without trying too hard.

What are some fun traditions typical of Hong Kong weddings that you enjoy?
An interesting tradition for Hong Kong weddings is something known as “Door Games”. On the day of the wedding, the groom accompanied by his groomsmen, must go pick up the bride at her home. But before he can get in the door to see his bride for the first time, he must pass a series of test and tasks presented to them by the bridesmaids who are guarding the door. The “games” include quizzing the groom on facts about his future wife and other physical and embarrassing deeds. The bridesmaids can be pretty creative with what they demand the guys to do. It’s always a lot of fun and laughs. Of course, I enjoy this tradition, because I’m on the serving end and not the receiving!

What’s your top pick destination for first time travelers to Hong Kong?
Hong Kong is such a dynamic city. It really is a blend of East and West. There is so much to do, but if you could only do one thing, I would recommend taking in the breathtaking view of the city on Victoria Peak. Hong Kong has some of the best architecture in the world, and when the city is lit up at night, there really isn’t anything else in the world that really compares.

Where are your favorite places to shop?
I love to browse small, distinctive, local shops in SoHo, Hong Kong. There are a lot of great boutiques selling everything from trendy clothes to antique jewelry. I also love night markets in Taipei. You can find all sorts of wonderful things for amazingly low prices.  Not to mention there is a lot of delicious street food for you to sample. Oh, and I can spend hours on Etsy.

Why did you feel compelled to bring Smock’s signature bamboo letterpress to the people of Hong Kong?
Well, first of all, the designs are amazing. So clean and classy, yet very modern. Also, I love the fact that Smock is so eco-friendly. A lot of times people think things that are environmental means you have to sacrifice on quality or looks, but Smock proves that that’s not the case. And basically because letterpress from Smock is about the most beautiful I’ve seen and I just want to share that with people in Hong Kong.

Thank you so much, Julie, for sharing a glimpse into what Six Chancery Lane is all about! We love knowing more about the great places where Smock is featured and hope you’ll make Six Chancery Lane one of your stops if you’re ever in Hong Kong. This is just the first of several Smock Store Spotlight features to come and we can’t wait to share more of the great shops where you can find Smock across the globe!