Art Rubber Stamps - What's The Simplest Way To Make Them Perfectly Clean?

If you have been experimenting with stamps for awhile, you can remember when you forgot to clean a rubber stamp, the one you just used with a dark black ink, and began inking it up on a nice yellow stamp pad...It's ruined! It only takes a mistake to ruin a pale stamp pad, and the only way to stop it is to clean your stamps thoroughly. But...what is the proper way to clean your rubber stamps?

Art stamps don't need to be cleaned between your stamping if you plan on using the same inks with that art stamp again before switching. Don't get so bogged down with cleaning the stamps that you don't love using them. You can always place a stamp face down on a damp towel to keep the ink, dye, or paint moist until you can clean the stamp when you are finished. Don't forget that some inks will permanently seep into the rubber texture and will not come out...no matter what kind of cleaner is used! Before reusing your craft stamp make sure you use a test paper to test stamp and ensure that the ink has dried out. Many a papercrafter has believed the stamp was simply stained only to find out that some ink or cleaner remained and inadvertently ended up ruining another ink pad.

The first step to cleaning any art stamp is to dab off the excess ink on the stamp on a scrap piece of card stock. This will keep your supplies from getting more inked up than they need to be.

Another way to clean rubber stamps, and one of the simplest, is to use baby wipes. Alcohol free baby wipes work great because they are disposable and just damp enough to clean off the ink. Some stampers like to use a toothbrush to get the deep groove of the stamp die clean. Be careful if using a brush because you don't want to spatter ink all over your clothes!Make sure the brush bristles are very flexible since you don't want to scrape your craft stamp while cleaning it.

Whatever method of cleaning you decide to use, make sure you don't use solvents to clean your art stamps since they can ruin the rubber. Do not submerge your stamps in water...this will cause the labels, adhesive, and rubber to come apart eventually. If you decide to use a commercial window cleaner, make sure you don't use one that contains ammonia as that can be harmful.

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