Good morning all you internet lovelies

I hope you are all happy and well today. I am a little late with this third part of my CE series as sometimes time just slips away and other things take priority. I do hope you will all bare with me.

Ok so what have we done so far, lets recap the steps that the poor toys need to go through shall we?

Tension test
Torque tests
Wash
Tension test
Torque test
Set fire to washed toy.

Then set fire to a second unwashed toy to measure the unwashed spread.

(And a big thank you to the members of the https://www.facebook.com/groups/cemarkingsupportnetworksofttoys/ for this list, and tons of guidance) I wanted to make sure that you are completely clear in the steps and the order of the steps as it is very important that you do it all in the right order, and I hadn’t made that too clear in the previous posts. If you came into this late too and haven’t read them the previous posts can be found here:

CE testing stage 1: what everybody who makes toys should know, and do.

https://beeskneesartdolls.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/burn-baby-burn-part-2-of-ce-testing.html

So what can be left after all that has happened? Surely we must be done by now. Well no, now its paperwork time.
And the first bit of that is certificates. All the fabric you have used (internal doesn’t really need this, but as a matter of personal preference and for a sense of completion, I’d go for all materials) needs to have been tested for chemical migration as outlined in the conformance pack*:

The chemical migration requirements (EN71-3) ensure that certain elements that may be
present in toys either do not leach out of the toy when it is sucked or chewed, or if they
do leach out, they are within safe limits.

So basically if a baby has your toy in its mouth nothing harmful will find its way off the toy into the child’s mouth or stomach. Unlike all the other parts, this is not a test you can do at home, it has to be done in a lab and cost quite a lot of money. This is what kept me in the adult doll market for quite awhile until I discovered CE groups are out there, groups that are willing to pool resources and get certificates together. Once you have a certificate for a type of fabric say Liberty cotton or the like, you can use that certificate to cover all dolls made with that material. You need a certificate for every bit of material you use. So hopefully you can find one and buy it, if not you need to get a certificate sorted yourself, very costly, get a group together and split the cost, or DO NOT use that fabric, wool or whatever.

Some manufactures do provide certificates that they will post out when you buy their fabrics but they are under no requirements to test at all.

So really in truth you need to do part 3 before all the other parts or you may find yourself with a half tested doll that is still not able to carry the CE mark. (maybe I should have told you that first, oops, my bad)

Ok now you have your doll, with a certificate for each material used, fill in your forms. Each design of toy needs a Declaration of Conformity and a Technical file, cross referenced with every certificate and lots of photos showing test results.

Oh and don’t forget labelling, the doll needs to have that sorted properly and be carrying a CE mark of the right size on a sew in tag or hanging tag, with lots of other information all detailed in the pack. And if it’s the sew in label you should have sewn that in and done the tension tests on its seams too. Head in hands at this point and off to make another test doll.

Apparently this gets easier the more you do it. Good luck if you want to make toys it’s a lovely thing to do and once you are over these hurdles, you are good to go, although it is recommended to retest every couple of years to make sure your techniques haven’t changed.

Hugs and Kisses
Ally

*link to the Conformance pack

https://shop.conformance.co.uk/hikashop-menu-for-module-98/product/self-certification-pack-for-handmade-soft-toys?fref=gc