Pacific Northwest made goods for the exceptional and humorous. Custom laser cutting, engraving design and light manufacturing services in Seattle, Bellevue, Woodinville, Washington. Readymade laser cut and engraved products featuring Made in the USA materials.
6 by 6 Arts, LLC - John Bronleewe and Thea Starr.
Happy Halloween!
It’s that time of the year to engrave pumpkins. We’ve done this every year since we’ve owned our laser. We own an Epilog laser and we use sugar pie pumpkins. They become pies after a brief display time.
Enjoy and stay spooky!
It’s that time again for the annual AdobeMAX Creative Conference. John and I have attended this conference for the last 3 years. While the in person conference was a great experience each time, last year’s virtual experience was great too. The bonus was that is was free last year and the same goes for this year.
If you are an Adobe product user, you should check it out. Often there are sneak peeks at product upgrades, creators who share tips and tricks and some famous people if you’re into that thing.
John and I use Illustrator, Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Adobe Fonts and Creative Cloud just to name a few. We always learn something new from the sessions at MAX.
Lastly, we will be one of the featured creator shops in the MAX Marketplace. Those who are “attending” MAX will get a discount code for our shop.
Friend to friend - I hope you take advantage to learn something new or just check it out while Adobe foots the bill for attending again this year. The in person conference is amazing and I look forward to them again, but it is an investment for yourself/company.
If you’re wondering what sessions I plan to attend, leave me a comment or shoot me a dm on IG, I’m happy to share.
Lasers & love - Thea
Hello!
Apologies for the lack of updates all around here and on IG. We have been busy with keeping our Roots plant stand in stock. We sold out of them briefly, but they are back in stock now! We are so thankful that the response to that design has been well received. (Thank YOU!)
A few have asked if any local retailers carry our Roots plant stand and in two weeks I will announce one that is in Renton! I am also updating our new stockist list today.
While we’ve been busy with keeping those in stock, I haven’t been able to release some new items that I had hoped to. I talk about it in the vlog video below.
With John working full time and I being the only half of our once full time maker team, we’ve had to streamline, adjust our methods and schedules. We’re doing well and can call in back up when needed from our daughters. It’s the design process that takes a bit more work for new items. I will have a small update of a couple of new items that we did very soon.
That’s all for now and thanks so much for your continued support!
Thea
I shared most of this information on my vlog yesterday: (In this video you can see a timelapse of our engraved Thanksgiving pie.)
Starting today on our Instagram, we are giving away a few items (US residents only) as a thank you for your support. So be sure to follow us there to get in on that action.
Tomorrow we will be participating in Urban Craft Uprising’s Virtual Winter Show.
I (Thea) will be live in the chat every day:
Wednesday - Friday Noon to 2pm
Saturday - Sunday Noon to 4pm
So be sure to pop in and say “Hi” to me!!! When you sign up for a free virtual ticket you are automatically entered to receive a door prize! We are contributing TWO of our super popular indoor plant stands to that event.
Lastly we are offering free shipping (US residents only) and ship daily to get you your goods before the holidays.
As always thank you so much for your support!
Thea
Do you remember a while back we did a custom kitchen corner nook thing?
We did do an update for fall!
Within the next week or so, we’ll have our winter display up and we’ll do another video for that too. We’ve managed to turn a weird dead space in our kitchen into a fun display nook.
Okay, back to a bunch of 2020 nope ornaments. (Thanks so much friends.)
We have long created “basic bitch”- esque scroll text signs with funny words and phrases. Something familiar looking but with a bit of a surprise bite to it. Keeping along those lines, we present to you our 2020 ornaments.
2020 Hated It / 2020 Nope / 2020 Meh Wood Ornaments
John and I wanted to create funny sentiments to engrave on our ornaments this year. While we both think the image of a dumpster fire and a roll of TP are funny things, we wanted to do something a little different.
We love vintage and retro looking things. That gave us the inspiration for each one of our new pieces.
Baby’s First Pandemic Ornament
We even made a customizable ornament!
Our First Pandemic Personalized Ornament
Each one is lightweight, made from US sourced wood and designed and created by John and I in our home studio. We even created a YouTube video to show them off.
In the video we mention that each purchase supports a small business. (We’re the small business.) After seeing where some of our first purchases came from, they are fellow makers/small business owners too. Not only did that fill my heart with gratitude and thankfulness to have such supportive people in our life, it has inspired me to share the crap out of our friends’ works for the holiday season. I’m working on a shareable list of small businesses you can support now and through the holiday season. Bezos and the Walton family have enough money. Spend your dollars at places you want to see around. So keep your peepers peeled for that upcoming post and thanks for your continued support.
Lasers and love - Thea and John
Although we’ve been in spooky mode since mid August. Time is weird anyways this year so who cares. But pumpkins unfortunately tend to mold here the PNW after they are cut. So we waited a bit longer to do our annual engraved pumpkin.
We made a little video with a little insight on our process of what we do to engrave a pumpkin.
I hope you’ll check it out.
Lasers and love, Thea
During the pandemic, we’ve kept a little very 1990’s home video style vlog on my YouTube channel for friends and family to keep up with us. Phone tag, different time zones and political talk can be rough. So this has been our most consistent way to communicate with our loved ones.
Yesterday, we shared very briefly a little tidbit about what we know about our participation in Adobe Max Marketplace this year. You can check that video right here:
That vlog was a bit rushed since we were short on time yesterday. But we will definitely be sharing more as the conference draws near. Definitely sign up for it too, because who doesn’t love free? John and I both have packed schedules filled with sessions. We’ve attended the conference for the past two years and both times we learned was inspired by so much. I know that sounds like sales pitch, but we truly love their applications and makes our creative endeavors grow.
More information about all of that soon. We hope everyone is doing the best that they can be right now.
Lasers and love - Thea
Well hello! I apparently forgot to queue up scheduled posts for the past few months. We’re all living in some weird time vortex right now with the pandemic going on, so I’ll forgive myself for that.
We have been creating and selling many plant stands. Shout out to all of you who wanted to spruce up your pandemic lairs with said plant stands. Thank you!
We decided to spruce up our digs too with custom things. I’ve been keeping a vlog on YouTube for friends and family to keep in touch during the pandemic. So we did a little video about the customization work we did for ourselves to share with them. You’re welcome to check it out too!
I didn’t intend to make these into a product for sale but after feedback, we are working on making them available.
We were and still are quite excited about the little customization in our kitchen and will be working on more projects like this.
We’d love to know if this would be something you’re interested in for your own home.
With spooky season upon us, keep your eyes peeled for season appropriate themed goods coming your way this week!
We hope you’re all well and safe during this weird time.
Lasers and love - Thea
Pajamuary - the month post holiday craziness. A time to relax a little in some pajamas.
I vaguely recall the fellow maker you said that to me almost 20 years ago. However, I do my best in sharing/spreading the word though!
So this is the time of the year where we get to personal projects. They’re always custom of course and that takes some design time. This year we started off easy but it’s a functional necessity of mine - my 2020 planner.
I’ve long wanted to try some engraving on leather notebooks and to potentially offer some up with our own designs. Seizing the opportunity to do so, I decide upon adding a personal graphic as the trial image. (I’m a little maxed out on star stuff right now and I wanted something distinctly me.) Full disclaimer: this is NOT my favorite tattoo of mine. However, like all of my tattoos (I only have four) it’s meaningful to me. I chose this one, because as you’ll see in the video below, it’s on the back of my neck and I forget that it’s there until someone points it out.
Check out the quickie video below and let us know if you would be interested in an engraved leather journal/notebook/planner.
Lasers and love -Thea
It appears that I haven’t blogged in about a year. We’ve decided to make some changes in our business. I feel like in the maker community, we’re not alone on changing stuff up this year. More on that in a future post. But there’s been a lot of action behind the scenes. If you’ve been following us a long our ride, you know we love Halloween and laser engrave pumpkins every year.
Laser cut spiderweb wreath - 6 by 6 Arts
This year we did a couple extra projects like this laser cut spiderweb wreath. It is on the delicate side so, it wasn't available as a seasonal product. Just something fun to do for ourselves.
The decorated wreath. Hand painted vintage silk flowers and toy snakes.
I also had a couple other small Halloween themed projects that I will share over on my other site. So now on to the pumpkins. It’s incredibly easy to find something you’d want to engrave. The tricky part is transforming an image into something that not only the laser understands but also translates well visually. Knowing how the negative spots will look on a pumpkin. Thankfully, John is super good at that so I toss images his way and he makes things work. This year, I chose two characters that I love and actually look and act like John and I - Gomez & Morticia Addams.
Morticia & Gomez Addams - 6 by 6 Arts 2019
Time to get my costume (Morticia) on and turn on the fog machine for the trick or treaters! Happy Halloween!
Lasers & love - Thea
We're asked a lot of questions about our name, process, how does laser cutting work, what can we cut, what's our favorite beers, do we really have 6 kids, the list goes on. So we thought it would be great to create an outlet to answer those questions. Rather than cutting and pasting responses we thought it would be good to actually see us answer them.
Follow our YouTube channel to see all of our videos.
Lasers and love - John and Thea