Prototyping Kind Of Day

We've been contacted a lot in the past few weeks for custom company signs. Two of them have been small independent coffee companies. (My favorite.) We've been creating samples and prototypes. We're big on prototypes, because we want to make sure our clients are getting exactly what they are hoping for. Most of us are visually inclined. Having a sample makes all the difference. 

Eyeballing this COFFEE engraving sample, it looked like it would fit nicely on top of our of Damn Fine Cup Of Coffee sign. (I do weird stuff in the office sometimes!) Sure enough it does. 

We have a wide client base which gives us the opportunity to see all types of projects, logos and fonts. It's a fun little world to discover. Each one engraves and cuts uniquely on our selection of woods. 

Lasers and love - Thea 

Keep Moving Forward

The college kids are home for spring break. We've always been a staycation type of family for spring break. We're more of summer travelers. We usually take this time to hear about things they've learned at college and catch up in general. Lots of political discussions as you can imagine. It has been interesting to hear their observations and thoughts on the future. 

Regardless of your stance on the current political environment, Resist & Persist is solid inspirational words of encouragement. 

Lasers & love - Thea 

Seattle Eastside Event Today! - Galaaxar

They are rare, but they do happen and today is one of those days. A Seattle-Eastside (the other side of Lake Washington) geek event is happening today! We're going to check it out and report back via our Instagram account. We're not vending but we are so excited to see the vintage goods and art work! 

We're just so excited something like this is happening in our neck of the woods that we had to share it here. More information about Galaxaar can be found here and here. 

Lasers and love - Thea 

Custom Just For You

Well, we've made to March. High fives all around! 

Behind the scenes, we've been busy cranking our custom work of all sorts. Unfortunately, nothing sharable now, but I promise we're making some awesome stuff.

Now is the time to get in those custom project requests! Have a nursery or kid's room that needs a custom name chalkboard or sign? A need to display your family's motto or last name in your family room? Need a sarcastic and/or hilarious saying engraved onto wall art for someone special or just for you? Shoot us a message and let's see if we can bring your ideas to life!

We get pretty busy during the holidays and summer months because of shows. We feel bad that we have to turn awesome projects away during those times, so I thought I'd throw that idea out at you all. 

Lasers and love - Thea 

Solitude in the Snow

Admittedly, I've been disconnecting on social media recently. I've been using my time behind the scenes to put effort into things that mean something to me and my family as a whole. With our sarcastic and snarky products, it's hard to believe that we're all a bunch of "Pollyannas" at heart.  We are and we believe in good.

Snow day 2/6/2017

Today was a forced reminder to unplug, clear our minds and enjoy the moment. Focus on the important and meaningful things. No power, no school and family time in the snow.

  I don't want to get too political or go into "parent mode", we do make snarky stuff for a reason. We're just silly laser cutters in the PNW when it comes down to it. But it's nice to unplug, refocus and refresh. We hope you all are able to do the same for yourselves.

Because no one should really want to punch their cousin over they're dumb social media posts.  😏

Lasers and love - Thea 

Keychains!

All of our keychains are back in stock! 

The holiday season completely depleted our supply. Our retailers love them too and they left our shop by the thousands. 

It makes me crazy happy to see my happy little doodles and personal self professed life resident status on these little guys.

We are proud to use exclusively reclaimed wood for their production too. The reclaimed wood does need to be processed a bit. Many pieces of the wood are from old barns, stores and other buildings that have been torn down or renovated. We have to strip layers off to get to the good stuff. Once we get to that stage we laser cut out our standard keychain shapes out, then laser engrave the designs. Finally we stain and add a keyring to each one by hand too. Its a labor of love, but we love doing it. I love seeing my little happy doodles with happy people out exploring. (Please keep sharing those with us!) 

Special shout out of appreciation to the Washington Hikers and Climbers Group on Facebook! Our keychains have been quite popular in that group!

Lasers and love - Thea 

Thank You 2016

2016 was a bumpy ride. Lots of news and political happenings world wide. I'm glad to be able to check it off of my list and move forward.

Regardless of all the bumps there's always some good to come from it. Personally, we've enjoyed a very full workload this year. Continuing to build our company, expand our capabilities and services. We had some really fun and challenging projects. We did some custom work that ended up at NASA. We made a commemorative adoption day wall art for friends to celebrate everyday that they are a family. We also took on some extremely high volume manufacturing jobs that kept us up into the wee hours of the night. 

After a couple years of planning, we got married!

Many things did not get checked off of the wedding to do list. But many things did and our loved ones were all there to help us to the finish line. It was a very good weekend. The whole wedding thing did make me derail a bit from consistently posting about our happenings. I'll be better about that in the coming year. 

Our work became available at more stores! We vended in Chicago, Portland and Seattle. Met some amazing fellow vendors and customers at each event. 

We were unable to keep our reclaimed wood keychains in stock most of the time in 2016.

Looking forward, we are excited about some opportunities and adventuring out of even further with our work. New prototypes are already in development and hopefully a few trips out and about.

Whatever comes our way in the 2017, we're ready. 

Thank you all so much for supporting our work, our designs and ultimately our family. 

Lasers and love - Thea 

Urban Craft Uprising love and a bit of bad news...

First, we had an absolute blast with our debut show in Seattle. Urban Craft Uprising was incredible! We felt so much love and enjoyed laughing and geeking out with customers. Thank you so much for everyone who stopped by our booth! We completely sold out of a few things at the show, which leads me to the bad news...

While we didn't have our keychains at the show (thank you so much to our online customers who stopped by asking for them specifically) we did sell out completely of all of our keychains over the weekend. I know, I couldn't believe it either. But to add more bad news to the bad news, we won't have them in stock again until after the New Year. Since we process the reclaimed wood all ourselves they are labor intensive. All remaining inventory we have is committed to our stockists. Which many carry our keychains. So if you've been hoping to get one and needed to do some holiday or selfish shopping, please check out one of our stockists in person!

Thank you all for the continued support!

Lasers and love - Thea 

2016 Holiday Markets

Want to shop with us in person? Mark your calendars those opportunities are right on the horizon!

We're looking forward to vending in Seattle for the first time and really looking forward to our return to Crafty Wonderland in Portland! 

Hope to see you there!

Lasers and love - Thea 

FREE SHIPPING!

This weekend enjoy free shipping on all domestic orders $20.00 and up!

Thank you for the continued support and love from our family to you and yours!

Thankfulness, gratitude, love and lasers - John and Thea 

Work, work, work, work, work.

Hi! We've been working up a storm behind the scenes. The college babes are descending upon our homestead this evening and I've been baking up pies and other goodies in between jobs.

I've been organizing our inventory for upcoming shows and I keep happening upon prototypes and discontinued pieces. I found one prototype that I was particularly excited about creating. 

Circus Font Letters

Many laser cutters offer monogram and basic wood letters. They usually come in the standard fonts. When we received requests for similar jobs we really wanted to offer unusual fonts. I'm not a fan of clowns, but I am a huge fan of circus style fonts and typography. I hoped that someone shared that love and would be inspired to create themed display with our pieces. Manufacturing jobs pushed this project to the side but I still had our prototypes. 

With the holidays upon us, I thought I'd post this full circus font alphabet set for sale for any families that get inspiration for home decorating before friends and family come for visits.

This full alphabet set features 26 pieces of capital letters in circus font. They are 3.5" inches tall with varying widths from 2" to 5.5" depending on the letter.  They are an 1/8" inch thick and are made from birch plywood. Extensive engraving time was needed to achieve this great look. Each one has been lightly hand sanded. 

There is only one set available so get it while you can!

The listing for this set is available over at our Etsy Shop. 

Lasers and love - Thea 

Winter Shows!

Ack! We're so excited to announce that we will be vending at two large craft shows this winter season! We wanted to do a few more shows and will be doing one private event in mid December, but there is only so much time on the calendar. So we had to choose wisely and hoped that we got picked and we did!

Our first show is a month away! We will be vending at our first ever Seattle craft show - Urban Craft Uprising. I (Thea) am no stranger to this show. I've been a vendor in every single UCU show up until this one. But I am more than excited to be bringing my new company to the show. It's fun to mix it up a bit. This show is so much fun! There's even a Preview Night and for the first time ever there will be adult drinks! Preview night is December 2nd and entry is by ticket only. For more information about Preview Night check out the link here. 

Details about the open to the public show are available below - entrance is free! 

www.urbancraftuprising.com

After a super fun weekend in Seattle, we will be heading down to Portland for our return to Crafty Wonderland's Holiday Art and Craft Market!!!

Crafty Wonderland will also be hosting a ticketed First Pick Pre Show Party. More information about tickets are available here. 

Details about the open to the public market is below and entrance is free!

www.craftywonderland.com

We are so excited to be vending at both of these shows! We're excited to meet with new and returning customers and catch up with our fellow makers too! 

Mark your calendars and start making your lists! Both shows are unique and have their own vibe. I can't recommend them both enough!

Lasers and love - Thea 

Pacific Northwest Lifer™ and Happy Places Series Wood Magnets Update

We've long been wanting to update these little guys with an ever so slight update.  We just wanted to create softer corners on these little guys. We like the look and with softer corners they match our other wood magnets. 

On the left - the new soft corners vs. the old style on the right. 

Not much of a difference but it's something that has been bugging us for a bit. 

Our Pacific Northwest Lifer™ and Happy Places Series Wood Magnets are made from maple wood laser cut and engraved with our original Pacific Northwest Lifer™ and Happy Places Series designs. Five designs total:

• Happy Mountain 
• Happy Raincloud
• Happy Tree 
• I (cloud) PNW
• Pacific Northwest Lifer™ 

Let us know what you think about our little update. 

Lasers and love - Thea 

Custom Company Sign - Pics for Promises

We recently had the great pleasure of creating a custom two layered wood sign for Pics for Promises.

A little bit about Pics for Promises (an excerpt from their site):

Pics for promises is a whimsical love-themed photography project built around the idea of giving back.  We are a husband and wife team fortunate enough to have a healthy family with a safe place to live, food to eat, clean water to drink, and access to doctors.  We realize this is not the case for everyone, so we are using our creativity to provide a small bit of help to those less fortunate.

Opening this website allows us to expand our reach, giving people the opportunity to purchase heart pics, and in turn give back to the community.  Not only are we donating 25% of all profits from online sales to charity, we are using additional profits to fund the Street Hearts portion of our project, from which 100% of proceeds go directly to a charity of the donor's choice.  Pics For Promises will also be working with local charities to sponsor events and help raise much needed funds.

Custom layered sign for Pics for Promises.

We thought it was an absolutely adorable project they've undertaken and were more than happy to create this custom sign for them.

This sign is two layers and a total of three colors. It measures 18" in diameter and 0.5" thick. Being two layers, it was one of the more uncommon sign requests we've had. Most love the minimal simplistic look of natural engraved wood. Which is absolutely lovely. But this style of layered sign gives a look of depth and splash of color that we love and find aesthetically pleasing. 

We carefully placed each inner cutout piece within the wording by hand (with assistance of tweezers) and securely glued it down. 

It turned out absolutely lovely and Pics for Promises posted a super cute photo of the sign being held on their Instagram account. 

Fun and lovely project for a fun and whimsical company-project. Be sure to check them out! 

www.picsforpromises.com

Lasers and love - Thea 

The Calm Before The Storm.

Like most makers that participate in craft shows, we're getting ready for that marathon of a storm by working a lot behind the scenes. We also happen to have quite a load of kid activities (we have another high school senior this year) going as well.

Lots of prep for packaging and display. It is by far the least glamorous aspect of our business, but important. Everyone enjoys some good packaging, especially when you're aiming to gift it. We want our products that will be gifted to be as ready as they can be to be giftable. 

Our wood magnets now come shrink wrapped! 

I'll be sharing a list of our up coming shows this week for those of you who would like to come out and visit us in person!

Lasers and love - Thea 

At home with 6 by 6 - Domestics and product development.

As you know, we work at home. Once upon a time when I worked at a corporate accounting firm I dreamed about being able to do this. No more long commutes, spilled coffee in my lap in the mornings and rushed lunch breaks. 

Waking up and strolling down the hallway "to go to work".  Having a fresh pot of coffee all to myself. (In our case, John and I share.) It all sounded like a dream and I have personally be so fortunate to work from home for the past few years with my other business.

View out of our kitchen window while we cook. 

My fellow work at home self employed friends know that "dream" is not that simple. While our commute is just a few doors down the hall or down the stairs depending on what stage of production we're in, we do have a rigorous schedule to get things done. 

When the shop is too cold for things to dry in we bring them indoors. Which usually means our dining room or kitchen room table. 

I'm up bright and early before the sun (which is a huge challenge for me because I am very much a night owl) with my kids to usher them out the door every morning. I then guzzle down a cup of coffee, not out of tiredness but for comfort and begin the work day. Often I have to take domestic breaks during the day to do mom things. Then I pick back up after dinner or into the late evening. 

During the late evenings I do a lot of design work. Lots of drawing and arranging ideas for product development. I doodle all day but late at night I've collected a lot ideas during the day and have time for them to resonate in my brain and I'll flush out ideas on paper. That way they'll be ready for John to critique and provide feedback on the following the day.

A vintage metal wire basket that I'll be repainting for a show display containing our small 8-bit heart magnets. 

Our home also becomes one big workspace. Aside from the designated work areas when things are going, things spill all over into all sorts of areas around here. It can be a little frustrating at times, especially when the kids want to have company over. But we make due until we hit the next accolade - a designated shop.

I wanted to share a little insight on how we work at home, we've had a few friends ask us how we do it. 

Lasers and love - Thea 

Cozying up with the laser.

I haven't had much of an opportunity to post here recently. We're busy filling wholesale orders for our stockists. Today we're trying to do as much as possible since we have a few days of storms looming over us. We live in area notorious for power loss during storms, so we're kicked into high gear.  

Our tabletop heater for our kitchen table. It's that time of the year where every open space in the house becomes a workspace!

Things are laid out everywhere in our house. Table top heaters, packaging supplies and more! Whatever it takes to get the job done.

I'm also currently lining up information about up coming holiday shows and special events that we will be at. Keep your eyes peeled for that information so you can see us in person! 

Lasers and love - Thea 

Standups are here!

When we vend at shows, we like to do something special for each show. At our most recent show - Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago, we debuted our standup signs. 

This was oddly (and hilariously) the most popular stand up that we had for sale. Go Away - perfect for your office!

We long debated on offering standing versions of our signs. Some folks have asked for that specifically since they wanted to display the signs predominately on a shelf or a mantle. So we made that happen! 

We're offering the standups in two sizes- small and large. Dimensions will vary by size. The designs we're offering are:

• As You Wish
• Go Away
• Once Upon A Time
• We Hate Everything Together

The small version measures approximately 4"x 2.5" inches and the large measures 8" x 4.5". The small version is $10.00 and the large is $20.00 each plus shipping. 

Large and small standups.

There is some light assembly required. You just need to insert the sign into the base. I personally have a "heavy hand" and seem to "accidentally" break things now and then... but these have stood up to the destructo-Thea-meter. 

We'll have more photos and exact measurements posted on the listing shortly! But in the meantime, let us know what you think!

Lasers and love - Thea 

We're back! Sort of.

We're still recovering from our wedding, all the things that surrounded the wedding and also a big show immediately after that in Chicago. Hello! To all our new friends that are finding us from that Chicago show! I'll have a separate post about that show and the incredible things we saw in Chicago later on this month. 

One thing to note, is that we currently have our Etsy shop on vacation mode for the rest of the week. I am revamping some old photos and adding some new products to all of our shops. 

Now on to some wedding pictures! I'll have more detailed DIY wedding posts over on my personal blog, which is more suited for wedding things. Quite honestly, I am still in complete shock that we pulled it all off. We had a rollercoaster of a ride making that event happen. We did everything ourselves with help from friends and family. Our wedding story includes a tree falling down onto a house, thousands of lumpia and a boat filled with beer. 

John and Thea on their wedding day. Appropriately taken by the friend who introduced them. September 3, 2016

We did things our way. We even made use of that downed tree and created a display at our ceremony site. Our ceremony included jokes, NIN, Richard Dawkins and Parks and Rec references and were announced "carbon based lifeform to carbon based lifeform". Everything was very us. 

6 by 6 Arts family. (5 out of our 6 kids)

Our wedding was very much handmade. It was also an intimate wedding under 70 people. We made our own food, bought our own tents, thrifted our decor, I made my wedding bouquet and boutonnière, John's best friend married us, my mother in law was our photographer, my nieces made the most beautiful wedding cake for us and our kids gave us way to each other and were our wedding party. It was so much fun. We felt so loved and honored to celebrate with ones we hold so close. 

Our wedding favors. 

We gave out some very unique wedding programs and favors of course! 

Photo by M&K Daoang.

Thank you all who have emailed/messaged us congratulations. It has been really awesome to receive those. 

One last photo, you'd think as laser cutters we'd have a laser cut cake topper. We did on a gluten free cake for our friends and family who are gluten free. But the very first thing I bought when we became engaged was this cake topper, so we had to use it. :) 

Lasers and love - Thea

Our cake topper. 

All is well again with 6 by 6 at Handmade at Amazon

I just wanted to do a little follow up about our recent strange experience with our shop at Handmade at Amazon. For a quick refresher about what happened to us - visit this post.

I posted that post link on various social media outlets and even tagged Handmade at Amazon in a post or two directly, hoping to gain any attention. Being in the Seattle area, we have a handful of friends who work at Amazon and extended offers to connect me to someone who could help. Which ultimately got me in contact with someone at Amazon! 

I received an email a day or two after posting my blog post about our experience from an actual person at Amazon. He inquired about my issue and I directed him to my blog post for reference, since I laid it all out there. Soon after that contact our account was restored! He did offer a direct phone call with me after our account was restored just to make sure that we were good to go. I declined because we got what we wanted, just to have access to our account again.

Shortly after that, I received a direct email from the leads at Handmade at Amazon team. They just wanted to speak with me about my experience over the phone, which I appreciated. They were very apologetic and told me that what happened to us was a weird isolated event, which was reassuring. The two that I spoke with were very nice and gave me the platform to mention things that I felt were frustrating. For me it I was bent out of shape about not being transferred to the department that I needed to speak to by a customer service representative. C'mon I know Amazon has that ability! Secondly, my disappointment in the the on site representatives promoting makers to join Handmade at Amazon at a large local craft lack of information for contacts for sellers. Lastly, this one was more on my own personal expectations as a long time maker, I'm used to having one on one contact with selling sites (I've been with Etsy a long time and have met quite a few admins over the years and they were always very accessible) and direct contact with customers. It's apart of the charm of the handmade maker scene. You are buying from a person who put their hard work and hands on the products. It's a personal experience. I felt that element was missing from Amazon's support. 

In the end, we got the help that we needed after all. I hated having to get the attention that we wanted to resolve the issue the way we did though. Thankfully, we were told it was an isolated incident but they wanted to make sure something like this will not happen to other sellers, which was nice to hear. 

Thanks to everyone who shared this and got us the help we needed.

Lasers and love -Thea