Editorial and checks
How we choose what goes on the shelf
The checks a pack passes here, the words we refuse to print on it, and what the standards on craft packaging actually mean.
What good looks like here
The four checks every WillBond pack has to pass
None of these are laboratory tests. WillBond standards come from the ordinary failures of this trade, turned into things somebody looks at before a pack ships.
The count is the count
A mixed pack is counted per size, not per bag. If the front says sixty rods in three diameters, it is twenty, twenty and twenty.
Nothing sharp where hands go
Wooden beads are sanded and the holes are deburred. Metal edges on clips and clamps are broken. A bead that shreds cord is a bead we send back.
Colour that survives the bag
Dyed cotton and felt are checked against the previous run under daylight, not shop light. Two bags of the same colour bought a year apart should still match on a table.
A closure that closes
Small parts arrive in a bag that reseals or a tin that latches. This sounds trivial until forty rhinestones go into a carpet.
What we will not print
We refuse a standard on a pack unless the maker states it, and we pass on their wording rather than improving it. A reassuring word on a bag is the one thing a buyer cannot check, so it is the one thing we leave off.
Where a pack holds small parts we say so and name the age. Where a material is mixed we name the mix. Where we know nothing, we write nothing, which reads duller and works better.
Where a pack goes back
A bore that shreds cord, a dye that shifts against last season's run, a bag that will not close over forty rhinestones. Each of those sent a run back, and a photograph shows you none of them.
None of these are laboratory results. They are the ordinary failures of this trade, turned into things somebody looks at before a pack goes out.
Labels and standards
What the words on a craft label are supposed to mean
Craft supplies sit inside real American rules, and the rules are more specific than most packaging suggests. Here is what the common phrases mean, taken from the agencies that write them rather than from the back of a bag.
“Art materials must undergo a toxicological assessment at least every 5 years to determine whether they pose a chronic hazard”
“children's products that contain more than 100 ppm lead in an accessible component to be a banned hazardous substance”
Three American rules cover almost everything on these shelves. The small parts ban is a physical test with a cylinder rather than a size in millimetres. The lead limit for children's products is one hundred parts per million in an accessible component. Art materials carry a conformance line pointing at an assessment done on a five-year cycle.
None of those three is a badge anyone buys. Each one is a requirement with a citation, and the citations are public. Our labelling guide walks through all three, quotes them at the source and says what each one does not cover.
We publish this because buyers ask, and because the phrases are easy to misread. It is general information about how these rules work, not advice about a particular pack or a particular child.
Sources
Everything above, at the source
Each page below was opened and read on the date shown. Where our wording and theirs differ, theirs is right.
- Small Parts Ban and Choking Hazard Labeling, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Read 1 September 2026.
- Total Lead Content, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Read 1 September 2026.
- Art Materials (LHAMA), U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Read 1 September 2026.
- Holiday Safety, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Read 1 September 2026.