We know that valentines day is coming and in celebration we are offing a special freebie with any handmade baby doll ordered between now and February 10, 2009. Order today and we will include our special heart rattle with your baby. Each heart is machine embroidered with I love you on it. This rattle includes a uniquely designed “handle” so the baby doll can “hold it”. This muslin baby doll was ideal on its own is now made all the more special with her own toy!
Ordering a baby doll from grammies dolls just got even better. Our dolls comply with the new Consumer Protection Saftey Inprovement Act. We have a resonable testing program in place and our dolls are made from 100% cotton muslin.
Alot of parents want to sew things for their childrens dolls, we know this and have a selection of patterns that include baby doll carseat, a baby doll carrier, and baby doll bed. But just the other day I loaded a pattern for a quick easy romper for a premmie or newborn size doll. I suppose that if someone wanted to they could also use the pattern as an outfit for a real newborn. If you are planning to do so just be careful in your selection of fabrics.
I plan to also add a dress pattern, boys overalls and shirt pattern and a pattern for babydoll diapers. These patterns come about at the request of my darling granddaughter who is her Grammies Doll….
As she requests some new item for her Newborn baby doll, I draw up the pattern and offer it to other doll makers and moms. I hope they are helpful….
Here is a picture of the newest pattern and some of the others as well….want on of them just click on the picture and you can order them.
Many people have never heard of it, more still have heard of it but think oh its not going to hurt me. If you think the latter you could be wrong. Why one might as is CSPIA going to hurt me, I don’t make or sell childrens items. Well they are right in their initial thoughts they don’t sell, they just buy children’s items so how can they be hurt? Its simple really, as a business owner I have to face facts; all business owners do so here are some of those facts and it will explain how its going to affect everyone!
Fact is CSPIA says that ALL CHILDRENS PRODUCTS have to be tested for lead and phalate levels. Well this is good thing right? YES! Grammies dolls is all for ensuring that nothing bad gets to our children, in fact we have been a proponent of this since long before the US government even figured out that our children are important! There is a problem with this testing though and with the Whole CSPIA legislation. The problem is that CSPIA requires that after August 14, 2009 ALL PRODUCTS INTENDED FOR OR APEALLING TO CHILDREN UNDER 12 HAVE ACCREDITED 3RD PARTY TESTING.
Now whats wrong with that? Well first there are few labs that are accredited. And even fewer of them are int he US. Add to that, they are busy with the big producers so dont want to be bothered with the little home crafters, or micro producers. More importantly for one of Grammies Creations, whether it be a doll or an outfit we are looking at testing that exceeds $250.00 per item. Not only that but the only way to do this testing is to destroy the item. Which means that I can’t make just one outfit, I have to make 2 exactly alike; one to sell to my customer and one to dontate to the testing. So we have already doubled what I have to charge for one outfit. Now add in 250.00 for the testing. Now your outfit that I could charge 15.00 just went from costing you 15.00 to buy to 280.00 to buy. Not logical right, can you pay for this?
The big companys mass produce so yes they can donnate one of thier shirts for testing, and they can average the cost of testing out over the 1000+ items in that size, style and color, but I can assure the laws o business say that they will average that cost out over all fo the items and you will pay for it anyways.
Now all of this testing is done, in response to the importation of toys from China that exceeded lead laws that were not being enforced at the time. More importantly it is being required on items that do not contain lead initailly and have no lead added to them in processing, and have alread met Oko-Tex 100standards, so we are retesting items simply because we cut fabrics and sewed them back together. Now that makes perfectly logical sense to me? No it does not, it is silly to retest something that has already been certified once, simply because it was cut into pieces and resewn. It did not change the properties of the once certified item.
Think about it like this, if you take a stick of butter from the refridgerator, and cut it into pats or pieces have you transformed it from butter to someting else? no its still butter, just smaller pieces. Now put all the pats side by side and push them together with slight pressure. What do you have? a whole stick of butter again. Did it change into peas? No, well most of your home based crafters are doing the exact same thing we are taking certified materials and cutting them, then reassembleing the same certified materials into an item. Now where in the process did we add lead…..But its the law….I personally think that maybe someone or a group of someones have been sniffing something wrong along the way!
Do your part, tell horable Mr. Waxmen and his friends in DC that we want component testing to be allowed on August 14, 2009! We want our children safe, but we want them to still be able to use hand made items!
Our store is now stocked with new dolls, doll clothes, accessories and patterns for making things for dolls.
We also have clothes for your living doll, from new born to size 6 we have them covered. Whether your living doll is a boy or girl we can provide quality clothes at affordable prices for them.
And we are not going away when the february 10 deadline hits for the CSPIA. You see CSPIA requires that we either have accreditted 3rd party testing or a reasonable testing plan in place. We have a reasonable testing plan for all of our products and have assured ourselves tht all of our products are safe for our children and yours!
All of our dolls also comply with the new lead levels. We want your children to be safe, just as much as you do. Now while we support the new lower lead levels we are urging all of our customers to be sure and contact your congresspersons and senators and let them know that they must ush the CSPS and that committee to make sure that there is an affordable alternative to the thrid party testing in place for micro producers! We know that our customers want to be able to get our products at affordable products and that all comsumers want to be able to purchase hand made products as much as we do!
Be sure and chack out the store for the new babies for your little doll!
Well its official we now have an online store. While its just a few of the outfits that are in our inventory, slowly and steadily we will get them all added. The hope is that as each day goes by a new baby outfit or gift set, an outfit a boy or girl will be added, and that one of them will catch your fancy and be added to your childs closet.
We design all of our children’s clothes with their comfort being first in our mind. that is one of the reasons that each of our outfits feature natural fabrics, no poly fabrics are used in our clothes. The qualities found in natural fabrics like cotton, hemp and wool add comfort and longevitiy to our designs. these fabrics breathe and that keeps the child wearing the outfit cool and comfortable; but these fabrics also have the ability to last much longer than clothing constructed in the “new” manufactured fabric. Although unique in our choice of fabrics, our designs are stylish.
We truly hope that as our online inventory grows that each of our readers will find that perfect gift for the child in their lives.
after much trial and error, and many requests we are now offering our clothing collection and baby gifts online. For many years we have been sewing our babys clothing, clothing for little girls and clothing for boys and selling and gifting them locally. Finally we are ready to meet the request for others to be able to buy from us, even if you are not in the southern PA area.
We will feature new creations on the blog as they come online so check back often to see what our designers and seamstresses have created for your grammie doll.