Weddingbee Blog

Back when I talked about ribbon wands, I said I’d do a post about what they cost. Well, here’s that post!

I started with the test ribbon wand that I liked and wanted to replicate. The first step was figuring out the “ingredients.”

• a stick
• 2 feet of 7/8″ ivory satin ribbon
• 3 feet of 1/8″ apple satin ribbon
• 3 feet of 5/16″ teal organza ribbon

I started with the ribbon, because I figure the stick part would be easy to find.

I decided I wanted to make 65 of these puppies, so I figured out how many yards I’d need of each. Can I take this moment to say that the metric system makes so much more sense to me than 3 feet to a yard and 12 inches to a foot? I like my nice round multiples of 10 and 100. But, the ribbon was labeled in inches/yards so I went with that. Metric rant over, thank you.

I’ll need 65 yards each of apple green and teal, and 44 yards of ivory.

Obviously, I’d bought some ribbon already, so I pulled out my Michaels receipts to see how much it would cost to just buy the ribbon there.

• Ivory: I had this in my ribbon stash from forever ago, so no receipt. Oops!
• Apple Green: $0.59 per roll, each roll has 10 yards. I’d need 7 rolls (’cause you can’t buy a half roll!) so total cost = $4.19. Not bad!
• Teal: $2.99 per roll, each roll has 3 yards. I’d need 22 rolls, so total cost = $65.78 WHAT?!

My cost was already up to $70 and that doesn’t include the widest ribbon and the sticks? Uh oh! So then, I turned to my trusty friend, the interwebs. I decided that there must be somewhere online that I could buy ribbon way cheaper. I started searching, and ran into a roadblock: I found lots of places selling cheap ribbon, but almost nowhere that was selling all the kinds I wanted in the right colours. I didn’t want to have to pay shipping twice, so I knew I’d have to find somewhere that sold it all. The one (one!) place I found everything I wanted was crafta.com.

• Ivory: $6.39 for 100 yards
• Teal: $1.59 for 25 yards = $4.77 for 75 yards
• Apple: $3.19 for 100 yards
• Total ribbon cost = $14.35 + shipping

I was a little spooked by the colour of their ‘Apple Guava’ satin ribbon, though. On my monitor, it looked like it could be the right colour, or it could be neon badness. It bothered me enough that I decided to buy that ribbon at Michaels, as the difference would only be about $1, or negligible if I waited for a sale.

I happily put 4 rolls of the teal (why not get extra, at that price?) and one roll of ivory in my cart, and went to check out. That is when I found out about the $50 minimum order and $5 handling fee for international orders. Argh! I checked through the website, added some apple green grosgrain ribbon to my cart, and added back the thin green ribbon I was going to buy at Michaels. I was still nowhere near $50. I sent them an email, asking if they could make an exception. I never heard back.

I really wanted these particular ribbons, and my search was turning up fruitless elsewhere. I complained in a forum, and someone contacted me and said that if I wanted, I could get the order shipped to her house in Texas, and she could ship it to me! I waited another day to see if I heard back from Crafta, and when I didn’t, I went ahead and ordered, putting the shipping address as my new online friend’s house.

Here is how the ribbon costs worked out:

• Ivory & teal: $12.75
• Shipping from Crafta to Texas: $7.25
• Shipping from Texas to me: $9
• Green from Michaels: $4.40 (including tax)
• Ribbon Total: $33.40

The sticks for the test ones were pre-cut lengths of dowel sold in packages of 20 from Michaels. (They were in the same aisle as the felt and kiddie stuff.) I figured that pre-cut, pre-sanded must be the expensive way to buy them, so I checked out the prices at Home Depot, and in the woodwork section of Michaels, where they sell longer lengths. It turned out that everything so close in price that it made sense to buy the pre-packaged stuff and not worry about cutting and sanding! The dowels are 3/16″ round, and 12″ long.

I waited for a sale and ended up getting 4 packages (80 dowels) for $13.50, bringing the total cost of the project to $46.90.

That’s cheaper than some bubble options I’ve seen, but not as cheap as rice. Still, it was worth it for the lack of clean-up!

I suppose that cost doesn’t include a glue gun and glue sticks, but I’ve had my glue gun since I was 10, and a ginormous package of glue sticks for it too, so I regard those as free. The same goes for the inkpad and stamp for the ivory ribbon. Cinnamon Buns and I are also both happy with the sticks being unfinished wood, so there are no paint or varnish costs, either.

Do you have a favourite and cheap, online craft supply store? Please share!