One of these days I’m going to go through the blog and properly tag all of the lace posts so that you can search them.
But, to quote my third-favorite Samuel Beckett play,
“We should go.” (They do not move.)
So, first things first, when Dharma Trading made it look like they were going to stop carrying their dyeable lace a few months ago, I panicked, but they have restocked! So here’s my favorite place for cheap lolita lace. It’s all cluny lace, which is really good for some substyles and sort of okay for others. They only have a 3 yard minimum, too, which is much less than other places. If you’re not dyeing it, you definitely want to pour some boiling water over it and let it shrink before you sew it on, because it does shrink. Their lace is also highly dyeable and you can dye it in a bottle really easily, so it’s SUPER versatile
Cheeptrims has good venise lace, but their minimum is one putup, which can be 15-70 yards depending on the trim. This means you need to fork over $20 for a spool and then figure out how you can use the cute lace up. This is handy if you’re making a mini-collection or if you have a lot of space and a big desire to keep lace on hand.
As for Joann, there’s three places in my store to buy lace. There’s the by-the-spool laces (cardboard spool), which are usually 1-3yards and can go from $3-$10 for a spool. Some of these laces are usable and some aren’t. A LOT of them also are available in the by-the-yard lace, and you have to do the math to figure out which one is a better deal. The by-the-yard (plastic bolt) lace can go from $1.40ish to $18 a yard. Like most lolitas, I like to think I know more about lace than the average layman, and I cannot for the life of me figure out the pricing system on the lace. It’s just nuts. A lot of that lace is raschel lace that we lolitas tend not to use, but there’s some cluny lace that’s under $2 a yard that sometimes floats around. By the yard lace comes in white, sort of white, kind of white, white????, black, champagne, and you-thought-this-was-black-but-now-you-got-it-cut-and-surprise!!-it’s-navy. Pull out the flashlight on your phone and check the colors. The major advantage of this is that you can feel and touch the lace. And while we’re on the subject, there’s a 40% off BTY trim coupon in the smartphone app that’s good until 3/31/18 so if you’re considering buying a lot of lace, now’s the time. (lace rarely goes on sale, however, so you can also use the standard 40/50/60% coupons that come up if you’re only buying one cut, so you’re not actually losing money if you can’t go lace shopping this weekend) Then there’s the BUY-the-spool lace (purple cardboard rolls with the lace secured with a sinver straight pin). I swear we’re going to have a lawsuit over those things one of these days, but they’re usually $2 a spool and have varying amounts on them depending on the type of lace. If you’re going to find a real discount on lace, it’s going to be in this section. I think this section is a combination of cheap lace they keep in stock with mill ends or some bargain purchase, because there can be some cool stuff in here.
If you’ve got a spool of string and a lot of free time, you can fake your own lace.
So you wanna make cosplay and eat food too huh? Well tough luck kid cosplay is EXPENSIVE so- Oh wait you’re buying from Jo-Anns*? Well then you just might get that tulle AND those tacos. Listen up, there are four main steps to saving money!!
Which forms the clever acronym SJCO! Wait that’s not really anything but ANYWAYS…
1. Sales
JoAnns frequently puts items, especially fabrics on sale! You can check your paper mailer or the website to find out in advance what will be on sale! Holidays are an especially prime time for sales (Easter, Mother’s Day, Halloween, they do sales for everything!) Sometimes it’s worth waiting a week or two until a big sale hits. (But be prepared for a crowded store!) A word of caution on sale items, you CANNOT use a percent off item coupon on them! An item can only be discounted once!
2. JoAnn’s Coupons
THIS, is where you can save the big $$$ with a bit of legwork! JoAnns releases coupons on four main platforms:
Pick the one easiest for you right? WRONG. You can use coupons from ALL FOUR AT THE SAME TIME. As long as your coupons have different serial codes you’re good to go! SO SIGN UP FOR THEM ALL ASAP! Also don’t forget to fill in your birthday month (or whatever month you want a 20% off total purchase coupon!) Phone (text) coupons are also an option, but they’re infrequent and I’ve never gotten much use out of them personally. Also sometimes there are flyers for future sales laying around in store, grab them when you can!
!!Also in store you can sign up for a student discount card with a valid student id that is good for 10% off total purchase, which is reusable!!
3. Competitor Coupons
JoAnns accepts (percent off item) coupons from Hanncock Fabrics, Hobby Lobby, and Michaels. These can easily be found on their websites, and additionally you can sign up for their email programs/apps! The same policy on differing barcodes applies (I believe HobLob only puts out one code at a time).
4. Organization
So you’ve got a LOT of coupons by now! And most of them aren’t even paper. Do you know what will make you cashier furious, and less likely to work with you?*** Trying to find and load them all at the register while a line grows behind you. Avoid this by screen capping everything with your handy dandy smart phone the night before! The cashier just needs to be able to see and scan the coupon off your phone, it doesn’t actually have to be in the app/site/email.
Now you’re going to go one step further and sort your coupons! Sort by:
Type! Some coupons are for fabric or craft only, these go first Amount! You want to use the biggest amounts first (typically 50% off) Source! JoAnns coupons should always be used before competitor’s. Kind! Use your item coupons before percent off total! ONLY ONE PERCENT OFF TOTAL COUPON CAN BE USED. If you don’t have one don’t forget about your student discount card!
Congrats you’re now an extreme (craft) couponer! And believe me the savings can be extreme!
57% savings! (Regular price total would have been $197.26)
*I encourage you to try and coupon and save w/ anything you buy for cosplay, but this guide was written for Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores specifically.
**You may consider making a separate email for coupons, JoAnns sends emails ever other day, and you can also use the same email to sign up for coupons from Hobby Lobby, Hanncock, and Michaels!
***Remember you are asking your cashier to do a lot more work and take a lot more time on your transaction! Please be kind and polite to them, it will make everything go smoother. ❤
P.S. Some stores may have their own policies (my methods should work at most!), never hesitate to ask a manager about what you can and can’t do!
P. P. S. I am not a JoAnns employee, just a cosplayer w/ limited funds!
I wish I could answer this better for you, but we get fabric from everywhere. When we go into the store it’s usually JoAnn’s because there are several nearby. We also check Hobby Lobby sometimes but they have a bit of a weird selection. 🙂 Hopefully we’ll get a chance to head down to a fabric warehouse near Chicago that I know about because we need some really specialized fabrics for some of our next projects!
MOST of our fabric shopping happens online though – It’s much easier to get the color/weight you want in my opinion. We’re addicted to swatches so that we can see and touch the fabric before ordering yards and yards of it, so unless it’s a last minute costume, we do some shopping around. 🙂
Here are a few of the pages we’ve bought fabric from/gotten swatches/maybe I was just looking at things there and we didn’t actually buy anything but I would in the future given the opportunity:
/This is mainly aimed for cosplayers, but you obviously don’t need to be a cosplayer to find this helpful/
When shopping for fabrics, you can get that a lot look very similar in the same color, and you don’t know which is best. When buying any fabric, it’s an amazing habit to take a picture of the fabric with flash, and without – this is because when getting your picture taken at a con, a ‘photographer’ may use flash, or not, and you want your cosplay to look good in both!
For example, I didn’t know which black/gray I wanted to use with my white. You can see the middle fabric, didn’t look too bad with the flash:
But without, it looked jet black, and that’s not what I wanted:
My other two fabrics, they looked similar, but one was way too shiny with the flash, and the other looked just right for what I wanted:
Trust me, after the con when you find pictures of yourself is not the time to realize you used the wrong fabric.
Struggling [to be] a[n] artist 