If you've stood in front of a craft kit trying to figure out what's actually in it, you're not being overly cautious. It's a reasonable question. A lot of kids' craft products get handled a lot more directly than a typical toy, sprayed close up, mixed by hand, sometimes tasted by accident, and the label doesn't always make it easy to tell what you're actually agreeing to.

What "Non-Toxic" Actually Means

"Non-toxic" isn't a legal guarantee that something is edible or entirely without risk. What it means, in practice, is that the ingredients aren't expected to cause harm through the kind of contact a product is meant to have: touching it, mixing it, getting it on skin or hands. It's a meaningful claim, but it's a specific one, and it's worth knowing what it doesn't promise.

"Food-grade" is a different, stricter claim. It means the ingredients are made to a standard suitable for something that might genuinely be eaten, not just touched. That's a higher bar, and it's rare to see it on anything outside actual food, which is exactly why it's worth noticing when a kids' product genuinely earns it.

"Safe" on its own, without either of those two words attached, usually means very little. It's the kind of word that sounds reassuring on a label and tells you almost nothing about what's actually inside.

What to Look For in a Craft Kit

A few honest, practical things worth checking before you buy:

Can you actually read the ingredients? If a label lists things you recognise, flour, salt, citric acid, mica, rather than a string of codes, that's usually a good sign. It doesn't prove anything on its own, but a brand willing to name its ingredients plainly is telling you something.

Where is it made? Country of manufacture matters, not as a guarantee by itself, but because it tells you something about the standards a product was likely made under.

Does the safety claim match the product? "Non-toxic" and "food-grade" mean different things, and a kit that's honest about which one actually applies to it is more trustworthy than one that uses the strongest-sounding word regardless of whether it's accurate.

Why Food-Grade Is Rare in This Category

Most kids' craft products don't need to survive being tasted, they're built to be looked at or played with, not put anywhere near a mouth, so most brands don't bother sourcing ingredients to a food-grade standard. It costs more, and it isn't required just to meet general toy safety expectations.

It matters more for something like a perfume kit, specifically because of how kids actually use it: sprayed close up, sprayed on siblings, and handled in a way that makes accidental contact with a hand near a mouth genuinely likely. That's a real, practical reason to hold one specific product to a higher ingredient standard, rather than a marketing flourish.

How Confetti Meets These Standards, Honestly

We don't use one blanket safety claim across everything we make, because it wouldn't be accurate. Each product gets the claim that's actually true for it.

The Candy Perfume Kit is food-grade. It's genuinely made to a standard where accidental contact on skin, hands, or if it ends up near a mouth, isn't a safety concern. This is specific to the Perfume line.

Everything else is non-toxic, not food-grade. Our Potion kits and Playdough use ordinary, recognisable ingredients, things like flour, cream of tartar, salt, citric acid, bicarb soda, and mica, the kind of ingredients you'd find in a kitchen cupboard rather than a chemistry lab. But non-toxic isn't the same claim as food-grade, and we're not going to blur that line. Playdough's own label says "do not consume" for exactly this reason: genuinely non-toxic ingredients, not an eating product.

We'll tell you when something isn't food-friendly at all. Our Science Discovery Potion kit, for example, includes a foaming ingredient (the kind you'd find in shampoo) that isn't a food ingredient. It's a normal, safe cosmetic-grade ingredient for the kind of play it's used in, but it's not something we'd ever claim is food-grade or safe to taste, and we'd rather say that plainly than let a general "non-toxic" label do work it isn't meant to do.

The Honest Version

Non-toxic and food-grade aren't interchangeable, and a craft kit that's upfront about which one actually applies, and why, is worth more trust than one chasing the safest-sounding word. Read the ingredients. Ask what the claim actually means for that specific product. That's a better filter than any badge on the front of the box.

Curious what's actually in our kits? See the Candy Perfume Kit → or read more about how we build things →