Wedding Blog

“What IS that?” you ask? Why, it’s my sheet of ribbon samples, of course. Some from my florist (the organza), some from Old Navy (the brown with aqua dot), some from Moskatel’s (on of the 1.5″ satin aqua ribbon), and most of it from Fabric Barn.

Despite its name, Fabric Barn carries mostly ribbon. Not fabric. There were maybe two [very short] aisles of limited fabric. I headed there after my rather disappointing downtown trip. What can I say? I’m just not built for rummaging around, stopping in every random store to sniff the good ones out, and bargaining. A delicious brunch with two girlfriends made the trip there worth it, though. Otherwise, I would have been quite the grumpy lime.

ALL I bought downtown. Yep, this is it:

The far left spools are perfect as I have a dots, circles, and dashes thing going on with all my paper stuff. My friend actually found two of the spools for me a couple of weeks back, and I found the last spool at Moskatel’s to add to my collection. The blue background with red circles ribbon is the wrong color, but I bought it anyway, because the wedding is making me crazy like that. The far right, 1.5″ aqua satin ribbon will encircling many a decor thing everywhere at my wedding.

So back to the LBC (where Fabric Barn is located). This isn’t even a fraction of what they carry:

They also carry some other random crafty stuff, plus TONS of favor boxes for what seemed like reasonable prices. They do have better pricing for bulk purchases. I only but glanced at those, as I haven’t given much thought to that area yet.

The booty that I got away with. Arrr!

TWO fifty yard spools of 1.5″ wide single-faced satin @ $7.99 each (that’s 7.9 cents PER YARD, folks) on the far left. Five yards each of random stuff that I self-served myself in the foreground. Prices for these ranged from 20 cents a yard up to 50 cents a yard. A papier mache-ready hatbox in the background for my card box that was on sale for $3.99. I saw similar ones earlier that day downtown for around $15. Yes, everything, even the card “box,” must be round to go with my circles thing. I will probably paint or wrap it somehow to hide the lovely chipboard it is made of, cut a slit in the top, and voila! Cheap card box!

And finally, a few tips for your trip to ribbon heaven:
1. Buying full spools is often much cheaper than buying by the yard. However, you don’t always needs 25-50 yards, so do the math before you cut anything (as soon as you cut some ribbon, you must buy it). You also need to check with the [busy] counter for spool prices.
2. The neighborhood is not the best, so go during the day and be careful when street parking. There is plentiful parking at the curb in front but no parking lot.
3. There is a bridal gown store next door. The stuff in the windows doesn’t look so great, but there could be a nice, low budget gem in there somewhere. I didn’t have time to stop in as it was almost closing time, so sorry, so review.

Fabric Barn
3111 E. Anaheim St.
Long Beach, CA 90804
Monday-Saturday 9-5
Sunday 10-4