Let’s Clean & Refill those Copics!
Hi Crafters! It’s Valerie here, and guess what?! It is Copic Marker’s 30th Birthday (check out this Copic web site page showing their Timeline!)! And to celebrate, MarkerPop is having a month-long giveaway where you will have chances to win multiple prizes, in fact, there will be over $300 in Copic products giveaways!
TO ENTER, you MUST be a follower of The MarkerPop Facebook page, their Pinterest Page, their Instagram Page, and their blog. You must leave a comment on the blog posts, and share this post on at least one social media account.
This contest started 03/06, and ends 04/06.
The winner will be announced on 04/13.
Today I am going to share how I clean my Copic markers. I don’t know about you, but my beautiful babies get messy very easily. So every once in awhile I clean them and spiffy them up (as my Gramps used to always say). Here are a few in all their messy glory:
There are 4 ways you can clean your markers: isopropyl alcohol, hand sanitizer, hand wipes, or Copic 0 Colorless Blender refill ink. Then you’ll need cotton balls and/or Q-tips:
Look at this poor R24 marker in the next 2 pics; see how not only is the outside barrel all messy, but when you take the caps off, you see the tips of the barrel are nasty, and the inside of the cap on the side I use the most is an absolute disaster!:
Now I’ve heard that baby wipes will clean your Copic markers. I tried it, and it was OK, but I think this method is really only good enough if you’re looking for a slight clean-up. I wiped and rubbed that marker with the wipe, and you can see how much ink is still left:
The next method I’ve only heard about, and I didn’t expect it to work; it’s using hand sanitizer. I had some in my purse, so I grabbed it, soaked a cotton ball with it, and wa-la, it took the ink RiGHT OFF, easy as pie!:
Now the R24 was so clean, I had to grab another marker, my E29; look at the mess on that one.
This time I used my most trusted method that I love, and that’s isopropyl alcohol. Get a cotton ball soaked with it, and you’ll see the ink come off your marker beautifully!:
Now the hard part… the INSIDES of the caps (blech!):
First I soaked a Q-tip in hand sanitizer, and got to work on the insides. It worked, but I could see I’d go through 10 or more Q-tips on each cap:
So instead, I poured my isopropyl alcohol (i.a.) into the caps, then rubbed the insides of the caps (while still filled with i.a.) with Q-tips. I poured out the then colored i.o and rinsed with water. Look how beautiful they got!:
Here is that original set of markers from the beginning of the post, and clean and shiny again:
I’m going to move on to another issue we all have once-in-awhile… a dried out nib. What you’ll need is a new nib, Nib Tweezers if you have them (I don’t), Copic Boosters, and your Refill Ink.
First, pull out the old nib, and put your new nib in; here’s my new nib in my marker barrel. In the background, you can see I’ve pulled the Booster needle out of it’s plastic cap; it’s like a long needle with a base on it:
Go to your wide end of your marker, take it out, and then put the booster needle into the inside of the marker:
Then start dripping the ink in; you’ll know when it’s full when the nib on the other end gets all juicy & wet. Then put the nibs back in:
So there she is! A clean, filled, great working Copic marker!:
Thanks for stopping by, and don’t forget to go to check out the other designers’ Copic posts!
