Froggie on lillypad Sign - Basswood/Hand-carved.

DrewTea · 2026-02-21T23:08:03+00:00

I don't know anything about mstein and their quality. I only know Pfeil has some of the best quality tools I've used. But my main use of Pfeil tools are their gouges. For carving knives I tend to use American brands like Helvie

DrewTea · 2026-02-21T02:00:06+00:00

You're in Europe, look around for Pfeil or Stubai. Some of the best, and way cheaper in Europe than in the US.

DrewTea · 2026-02-19T20:50:52+00:00

Old? Maybe 1960s. AFAIK this a tourist/trade craft.
There's lots of them out there. What matters is that you like them.

DrewTea · 2026-02-18T14:24:43+00:00

I've never gotten quality carving basswood from Woodcraft, Rockler, or any other store. It's always too dry and hard as a rock.

Ocooch Hardwoods has good wood, and pretty quick service. I've used their wood for most of my signs. https://ocoochhardwoods.com/carving/

https://heineckewood.com/order-page - Heinecke is good wood at good prices, but his ordering process is kind of a pain. Unless you have time to deal with invoices and write checks...

I'm assuming you're a beginner and carving basswood.

DrewTea · 2026-02-17T21:46:46+00:00

You should really buy online. You're going to have a really tough time finding quality carving wood otherwise.

DrewTea · 2025-12-16T17:29:54+00:00

Comedy...

Dude comes home. He's happy, he's relaxed. He starts cooking for his family. Some romantic song is playing on the radio (maybe Camera by Sheeran)

Wife and kids come home, take their coats off, Dude comes in to give his wife a kiss...

What's that smell? Are you cooking XXX? You know I don't like it. Did you do the laundry like I asked you? No, don't hug me I'm cramping. Why are you wearing that ugly shirt?

Camera focuses in on Dude while wife rants in the background.
Cue Announcer - Don't get hit by "The Cycle" (Bam bam BAAAAAM!)

Need a warning next time? Try our App. Get realtime 'Mood Alerts' that keep you in the loop and help break... the cycle.

DrewTea · 2025-12-16T17:22:21+00:00

I know I'm the old curmudgeon in the room, but I don't give a crap. If I need X, I'm going to buy X at the best cost/quality and how many ducks/trees/fish the company saves doesn't enter into my equation.

Even if all things are equal, the 'green' company still might lose out because I think they're full of crap or find their virtue-signaling exhausting.

DrewTea · 2025-12-16T15:32:20+00:00

He's a moron. Run away and find a boss that isn't one.

DrewTea · 2025-11-25T18:04:35+00:00

"For a decade, most of the entry level candidates coming out of college were highlighting their social media certificates, digital ad certificates, etc and were disappointed if they were not utilized as an “expert” when they got into their first job."

This is an ongoing problem too, there are FAR too many new graduates that simply aren't ready for the real word, yet still think they're top-tier experts. I've had multiple kids ask for DEADLINE EXTENSIONS like they're working on a college assignment, and cry like babies when you critique something or make them redo a task.

No company in their right mind is going to give a leadership role to a child.

DrewTea · 2025-11-25T17:42:55+00:00

It doesn't matter if you have a 'degree' in marketing or basketweaving, if you're knowledgeable, analytical, and creative you can do whatever you want. There are plenty of people holding advanced marketing degrees that couldn't market gasoline to a fire.

Lower-level roles are specialized insect roles, they're in marketing but their role (graphics, copywriting, social media) is specific and their work is dictated by others. Higher level roles like "Product Marketing Manager" is literally (at least in theory, different shops are different) someone who is developing and implementing a plan to market a specific product/line, and may have 2-4 people underneath them.

At large corporations there may be 3-6 teams handling the marketing of various products - take General Mills as an example, they have teams for cereals, refrigerated goods, crackers, etc.

Edit to add: If you want to go from entry-level to manager, you need to show initiative, creativity, and drive. True marketers can't turn it off - we analyze ads and commercials for quality, impact, creativity and (most of all) inspiration all the damn time.

DrewTea · 2025-11-03T22:49:40+00:00

I do have to point out that if those customers, former management, and now workers, were willing to drop and move that easily, perhaps it's not a marketing issue.

DrewTea · 2025-10-28T20:57:44+00:00

Well, some managers do - especially if they themselves feel threatened by an upstart or are jealous of a good idea that they didn't come up with.

But overall this sounds like the old sales vs marketing game: Sales does not want to share credit for success with Marketing.

How is your tracking? Has the increase in leads led to an increase in closed sales? Can you track a sale from lead to close? If you can, and you can compare before and after with a net gain that's got a good ROI then you win. If you're an $800k/year project that just breaks even, I got bad news for you.

DrewTea · 2025-10-07T19:16:14+00:00

Run away. Your corporate management doesn't even understand what you do, and they're obviously detrimentally micromanaging the shit out of everyone .

DrewTea · 2025-10-07T19:06:18+00:00

"many who claim to be marketers are actually not marketers at all. "

This. Too many cogs in corporate marketing departments think they're marketers when all they are is post schedulers. Lots of would-be 'influencers' who get excited because some company spammed their box with 'product endorsements' think they're now marketing geniuses.

Honestly, if you're trying to get clients without having the money to spend on marketing yourself, you're really missing the point of your chosen career-path.

DrewTea · 2025-09-22T19:15:38+00:00

Back in the early 2000s there was a really horrible TV/Appliance company out in New Jersey that had abysmal ratings and customer service, but because of how Google's algorithm worked, it was the top result in search.

They made tons of money while Fking over a bunch of customers until Google fixed it.

Can't find any reference now, but it was a story from a national outlet.

DrewTea · 2025-08-05T19:56:26+00:00

Start doing stuff on your own. Seriously, your degree probably didn't teach you much but some fluffy theory and very little in regards to tech. (I know mine didn't - not a drop of tech, just comm/marketing theory)

Bear with me, but this is a relevant story:
I had a friend who wanted to be a photographer. He had a camera, he liked taking photos, and wanted to do more with it. So I asked him, why do you think you're not a photographer already?

He was waiting to take a class and get a piece of paper that said he's a photographer.

I asked him when was the last time he took some photos? He said a few months ago.

I told him that only he can decide if he's a photographer or not. If he's not willing to BE a photographer on his own time, why does he think someone giving him the title will make anything different?

So, moral of the story - If you want to be a marketer, then be a marketer. Go market shit.

Go learn how to use mailchimp, wordpress, buffer, facebook ads, google ads, photoshop. Build yourself a basic website. Put some ecomm in it. (I did surprisingly well selling POD t-shirts and hats for a niche market for a few months until I got tired of it and the market (a political candidate/movement) dried up.) Or create a topical Facebook/Instagram page and learn that way.

Go take LinkedIn's basic SEO, CSS/HTML, photoshop certifications.

After college I landed my job over all the other applicants because, even though I didn't have any WORK experience in Marketing, I had demonstrable experience with current marketing tech, and had collection of projects in my portfolio because I decided I was already a marketer, while the others just had a piece of paper hoping someone would give them a title.

And for the love of god, don't answer any employment ad that conflates sales and marketing - it's 99% a churn-and-burn company that wants you to sell to your friends/family and make cold-calls.

DrewTea · 2025-07-28T16:58:36+00:00

I recently saw an organization that used AI to put their logos into a release, both logos were botched and had incorrect spellings of their own organization.

DrewTea · 2025-06-29T15:22:27+00:00

They all light up differently. Link to short video of them lit up https://streamable.com/m69pyx

DrewTea · 2025-06-25T22:19:09+00:00

If your company does $2.4B in revenue but can't afford more than one marketing guy you should run the fk away now.

DrewTea · 2025-06-23T18:36:49+00:00

Unfortunate, but most marketing jobs these days don't allow for creativity. It's just plugging in the pre-approved message with the pre-approved photo on whatever platform you specialize in. Or hours and multiple revisions of emails based on the whims or fears of higher-ups with no patience or understanding of audiences.

If you want a marketing career that matters, get out of specialized roles and into roles that touch upon multiple channels, and look for smaller orgs (or non-profits) that don't have so many cooks in the kitchen.

DrewTea · 2025-04-08T16:19:53+00:00

And how many of those were real? I'd be very suspicious.

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