Learn About the Artist
& Our History
Long before Grimm’s Toys became a world of its own, Taylor Alexandria Hayden was shaped by stories. As a child, she was drawn to fairy tales — the kind passed down and read aloud, filled with forests, animals, and magic. With her German and Irish roots, these stories felt less like fiction and more like inheritance. Growing up in Texas, she spent her time writing, sewing, and making things by hand, often imagining objects as characters with lives of their own. Her father, an avid gardener and believer in reuse, taught her to see beauty in what had already lived a life — worn tools, old fabrics, and overlooked things with stories still inside them. That way of seeing became the foundation of her creative work.
Years later, while living in New York and studying American literature at 'The New School' University, those childhood stories and values resurfaced in an unexpected way. In 2018, Taylor came across a box of worn and discarded stuffed animals headed for the trash. Instead of turning away, she brought them home. She washed them, restuffed them, and stitched them back together. What began as an act of sustainability became something deeper — a desire to create characters from reclaimed materials, each carrying a past and ready for a new chapter. Grimm’s Toys grew from that moment, rooted in the belief that what has been used, loved, or forgotten can still hold wonder.
Back in Texas during the pandemic, Taylor leaned into this work with heart and intention. She began to design her own plush characters from secondhand fabrics — creatures like Oliver the Octopus, Ophelia the Opossum, and even more fantastical friends, each with a story to tell. She added button eyes, hand-stitched smiles, and intentional imperfections into every toy, wanting them to feel like something your great-grandmother might have made — meant to be cherished, mended, and loved over time.
Her background in literature naturally found its way into the line: Taylor began writing companion stories for her characters, weaving lessons about kindness, self-worth, and caring for the planet into each tale. Like the Brothers Grimm and Beatrix Potter who inspired her as a child, she saw children's literature as a way to connect hearts and spark imagination.
By 2024, what was once a side project became Taylor’s full-time creative life, made in her North Oak Cliff studio with reclaimed materials sourced through donations, thrift finds, and fabrics once destined for landfill. The work is slow, tactile, and deeply personal — each creation an act of care.
But the true heart of Grimm’s Toys isn’t just in the toys themselves — it’s in the moments they make possible: a child wearing a costume inspired by a book character, a family passing down a beloved plush with a story to match, or a young reader discovering that something used and loved can still be beautiful.
Every plush friend, every book, every stitch carries that beginning — a box of forgotten toys, imagination, and the belief that stories worth telling can come from the things we choose to save.
