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.

Constellations

October 19, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

We're releasing the final installment of our ornament selection for the year today. I still feel like it's a bit early, but I completely understand gift giving long distance and making sure things arrive well in advance. So here they are, our constellation ornaments. As the listing says, I might be predisposed to favoring all things star and space related.

When I was a kid one of my favorite childhood memories is from a night that my friend (of 34 year now) and I were out doing a rescue exercise with her dad who was a fire fighter. We had to pretend we had whatever injury was assigned to us and let the firemen and trainees properly assess our injuries and provide care. I believe I had a broken femur for my injury. We got to cover ourselves in fake blood and everything. We had to lay around on the ground and wait to be found. I remember looking up at the sky, it was so beautiful. Filled with stars. It looked like a movie. Sparkling stars against a pitch black sky. I remember naming constellations weird things like Pound Puppy and ham sandwich. We were lucky to grow up on an island with no light pollution so our eyes and minds could run wild absorbing them all in.

As always, we laser cut and engrave our work with care. We hope that these will become family heirlooms and personal treasures for you. But we highly encourage you to enjoy the night sky whenever you can.

Lasers, stars and love - Thea

Hot and Fresh Out Da' Kitchen

October 12, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

..mama rollin' dat body got every man in here wishin'... Hey, when you have an ear worm you roll with it.

This weekend I fiddled around with ye olde website and gave it a bit of a facelift. It's been a little over a year since we started and back then I just tossed a little something - something together and called it good.

Over the past year, we're worked on tons of various projects and prototypes. We have a lot more to share about our designs, work style and capabilities. We'll be showcasing a few things on our brand spanking new YouTube Channel. But a fresh new website was needed.

Our shop page is now categorized and our site is searchable! Yay for technology!!! (That I figured out!!!)

Let us know what you think! Or if you find any typos, I'm pretty much the typo queen of Washington State.

Lasers and love - Thea

Sneak Peek

September 21, 2015 by Thea Starr in Process, Shop Update

We are totally in the camp of stores not putting out a holiday's themed items way before the actual holiday. But in the retail game you are creating your items well ahead of time. Especially right before the end of the year. As a designer I get giddy about products that we develop months ahead of the their release time. Sometimes I share my original sketches or our Corel Draw work in progress shots on our Instagram. John and I have worked on this product for months. It will be our first kit product!

This is just a teaser of what is to come. We'll be launching it in October. But I have had the most fun with project!

Can you tell? John had to reign me and my imagination in a little bit on this. John is not only my partner in life and in business but also my voice of reason for my creative process.

Many of our buyers have asked us for kits. There are so many kits out there for various things, I wanted to make sure ours was something easy to do and fun.

I hope I'm making you curious.

Lasers and love - Thea

Hello My Name Is...

August 27, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

Hi friends! I had to take another mini break from posting updates. We've been making items like the dickens to fulfill wholesale orders that we received at the Seattle Gift Show! We will proudly share the names of our newest stockists as soon as our shipments head out to them. The Seattle Gift Show was our first tradeshow experience. We went in "green" not knowing what to expect and it turned out to be a fun event. We had great neighbors that we're calling friends now and made some great local connections. It was great being commended for just being a local company!

In other news; I know I've been promising this one for a bit... and starting today you can pick up your very own Hello My Name Is - name tags!

Let everyone know when you walk into a meeting that you are Awesome or Trouble! Readymade available names are: Awesome, Bigfoot, Trouble and my personal favorite , Yo Mama. You can even customize one with your real name or whatever you'd like. But be warned you'll want to smell the name tag. That's right, smell it! Because laser cut wood smells awesome.

That's all I got for today!

Lasers and love - Thea

Beer Me, Booze Me, Wine Me!

July 12, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

That's right, we've created "The Holy Trinity"! It started with Beer Me:

And we've added Booze Me:

And by popular demand, Wine Me:

Why do we call it The Holy Trinity? Well, I'm sure we're not the only ones who've spent some time "praying to the porcelain god".

I have personally been known to say all three of these at any given time. It's just so effective when someone is walking to the kitchen/fridge/refreshment area. Beer Me! Booze Me! WINE ME! Hey, you can't get what you want unless you ask for it right?

State your preference in your home or a special event with one, two or all three of the this trinity. Speaking of trinity, we have a little coupon code if you want to own all three.

Enter coupon code (TheTrinity) from now until Thursday July 17th, 2015 and save $5.00 off of $45.00 purchases!

So what's your preference? We did consider Coffee Me, but let's face it, no one is in the mood to talk until the first cup of coffee is finished. Its just an unspoken understanding.

Lasers and love - Thea

Renegade Craft Fair San Francisco California

July 10, 2015 by Thea Starr in Events, Shop Update

In just a little over a week 6 by 6 is hitting the road to San Francisco! We will be vending at the Renegade Craft Fair San Francisco edition July 18 & 19.

We will be at booth #232B in the Herbst Pavilion! Will have our classics (BeerMe, We Hate Everything Together) and much more! Including the West Coast in chalkboard magnet form!

That's right! We've completed the continental West Coast of the United States by adding California to the mix! And true to our style they were designed to fit together.

We will have loads of the Golden State on hand at Renegade in San Francisco. Unable to come to the show to grab one for yourself? Not a problem, I've just posted them in our shop.

We're excited to hit the road and have an adventure!

Lasers and love, Thea

Pacific Northwest Lifer - Keychains Update

May 27, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

When we opened our business doors about a year ago this month, we had a plethora of ideas that we wanted to bring to fruition. Aside from my ninjas, my Pacific Northwest Lifer logo was first on my list. I wanted to put Pacific Northwest Lifer onto everything. While the rest of our country is pretty great and beautiful too, I was raised at sea level among towering evergreen trees with rugged mountain ranges in the distance. This is home for me. We happened upon some reclaimed wood and created our original designed PNWLifer keychains.

Since it's been a year, we decided to update the look of our very popular PNWLifer keychains and added two more designs!

All of the new and improved designs are available in our shop. We hope you like the new look and the new added designs. There are more in development too!

Thanks so much for all the PNW love we've received this past year!

Lasers and love - Thea

Weekly Family Menu

May 02, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

I just want to thank everyone you gave us input on our weekly family menus! We weren't able to accommodate all of the suggestions. (We're developing a shopping list companion for the Weekly Menu chalkboards.)

Pictured above is a full sample board with the super strong magnets attached. We decided to keep things simple with this board. Our personal one is much like this. We decided to leave plenty of space for writing. That decision was made because we often write down multiple meals for the day. Most people don't cook multiple meals daily but just in case you do, you have room to write.

We selected six colors (check out that goldenrod!) and four unique fonts. You won't be able to find fonts like that in a craft store!

I just want to say a little bit about the magnets we chose. THEY ARE RIDICULOUSLY STRONG. They might look tiny but these suckers really stick.

We do offer customization for these too! You can add whatever title or name you'd like (within 24 characters) for an additional fee. Otherwise, our stock ones simply say "Family Menu" on top.

We hope these find their way into homes that need help keeping organized or homes with kids who ask that day in and day out question to their parental unit "What's for dinner?".

Lasers and love - Thea

Sasquatch Light Switch Plate - 6 by 6 Arts | 2015

Now you see me - Now you don't

April 02, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

As the description in the listing notes, growing up in the Pacific Northwest you hear many stories about the legend that is Sasquatch. Most are X Files like, it's a solid folklore story that has been around for generations.

Admittedly, we've been watching way too many nature shows about the wild west and the Rocky Mountains. I also introduced John to the show Ancient Aliens, only because he didn't get the reference about the guy with the crazy hair. "It's aliens man." (Insert internet meme here). So that all led to inspiration on certain topics like Sasquatch. I like to believe that if Sasquatch is real, he'd be like Harry from Harry and the Hendersons. Just a cool elusive clumsy hairy dude. So elusive that you could see him one minute, blink and he'd be gone. Inspiration for these little light switch plates we did here.

We've been wanting to do some more light switch plates. Mainly to replace the gaudy gold 1980's ones that we have around our house.

I debated on painting the eyes with glow in the dark paint but I thought that would be overboard. These come with cute little screws (yes screws can be cute!) for easy installation. While I've got your attention, tell me do you have fancy or fun light switch plates around your home? I have a handful of designs for ones we'll be making for ourselves. But I'm the lady that draws mustaches on outlets. I'm not necessarily the authority on home decor.

Lasers and Love - Thea

Some Advice

March 26, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

* Warning*

This post contains profanity. If you are sensitive to language consider skipping this post.

Just this morning on Facebook my best friend of 33 years posted a little meme picture that read "fucks need to be earned." We see things like this posted all over the internet which are meant to inspire really caring about what matters. It might be in a so-called crude way but you get the point.

Not long ago I was spinning my wheels hard about something really stupid. We've all been there right? You get worked up over something for various reasons. An hour later you forget why you are actually mad. Maybe someone said something on the internet that pissed you off. After awhile you question whether or not you actually like that person who said that dumb thing to begin with. Or maybe you didn't understand where someone was coming from and then later learned more details about the situation and then you get it. Unnecessary fucks spent.

We've all been there. We've all lost it over really dumb stuff. It's really a shame to invest so much energy into a whole lot of nothing. That includes people. People can be shitty sometimes, but time spent on the ones who actually matter are worth it.

"Two of the most valuable things we have is time and relationships with other people. - Candy Chang"

I firmly believe that.

Spend your fucks wisely. Spend them on people who want nothing from you but quality time. Don't waste them on the bitch that sped up and cut you off in the parking lot to get that open space. Don't waste it on that cashier at the grocery store who yelled at you about how you put things on the conveyor belt. Don't waste time on people you've let go of. Most of all don't be mad at yourself, keep moving forward and learn to spend your fucks wisely.

Lasers & love - Thea

Island People Are In Fact Weird

March 24, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

A couple years ago a couple of my childhood friends and I vacationed together on our home island. We visited our old neighborhoods and special places where we once roamed. Which of course led to debauchery. Let's face it, when you hang out with childhood friends no matter what age you are your maturity reverts to a lesser level. To make a long story short, one of us spotted a flock of pink flamingos in the front of a local establishment and we may or may not have attempted to "borrow" one of them. Let's just say, the plan hilariously failed and will live on in friendship lore.

*Disclaimer - In no shape or form do I promote unauthorized "borrowing". In our defense, as the title of this entry claims, island people are in fact weird and do weird things. It's always in good fun. We promise.*

Funny where inspiration comes from right? I do like the appeal of the kitschy-ness of the pink flamingos. I thought it would be fun to have them standing proudly in my indoor plants.

As the listing notes, my first intention was to make some standard plant identification stakes. But my mind deviated and end up with these.

They do absolutely nothing but make you smile. And hey, we own a laser can bring our crazy ideas to life like this.

Lasers and love - Thea

Forever Or Whatever

January 12, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update, Process

Yesterday, we quietly listed a sign with a wider appeal than our "We Hate Everything Together" signs.

Like all things we do, it starts with a doodle.

My doodles are often crazy and more elaborate than they should be. This one wasn't too bad. As you can see there are some changes/development notes that occurred with this. I was thinking of a classic and simple design. Something that could be multi purpose. Truth be told, I'm not a Valentine's Day girl. I'm also not a flowers and open the door for me girl. I'm a beer and ramen lady, hey it's hard to hate on someone who brings you food to eat. But I do like sweet little things like this. It could be for any day. After all it's appropriate to convey love for someone everyday.

"Forever & Ever Babe" was my original wording. John then morphed into "Forever or Whatever", which we all found hilarious but we get enough "evil side eyeing" about our "We Hate Everything Together" stuff. So we decided on "Forever". We hope others will too. Not just the sign but after you've lived a bit and grown into yourself we hope you all find someone to fill your heart up for forever. Lovers, friends, puppies, whatever floats your boat.

Love is good.

Lasers & Love - Thea

Starting 2015 Off With A Bang!

January 09, 2015 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

Hi guys! It's been a few days. We hope everyone had a nice holiday. We enjoyed two full weekends of wandering around the house wondering what to do after the holiday show madness. It was weird and great.

We're back at it with a few new items in the shop (pictured above) and available to check out in our shop. We'll have a few more "love" themed items coming out very soon. We're busily cranking out custom work while receiving texts from our college baby requesting care packages from home. (She was just here.) It never ends and we like it that way. :)

We hope your year has started off exciting like ours has!

Lasers & Love - Thea

Icosahedrons & Damn Fine Cup(s) Of Coffee

November 20, 2014 by Thea Starr in Shop Update

It's a little late in the game today. Which is actually the norm these days. I suffer from the exact opposite of SAD. Fall & Winter are my most creative times and I'm always full of energy. Poor John is constantly bombarded with random ideas blurted out at him. One of the most recent blurts is this:

Twin Peaks is one of my all time favorite TV shows. I'm thrilled that there will be a revival season in 2016. One of my favorite quotes from the series is: "You know, this is - excuse me - a damn fine cup of coffee...". When Special Agent Dale Cooper sits down for breakfast at The Great Northern. Whenever I come across a damn fine cup of coffee that scene rolls through my mind.

Additionally we added some icosahedrons (I LOVE saying icosahedrons!) to our 2014 ornament line.

Geometric shapes are always in style are beautiful. And who says you have to limit your tree trimmings to Santa or snowman theme fair! It's your tree! You do whatever you want. :)

I hope you've enjoyed my evening's rambling!

Lasers & Love -Thea