Love Your Stamps

Simple steps to take for years of stamping fun

Cleaning Your Peg Stamps

Never soak or put peg stamps in water or any liquid, it will ruin them and avoid household cleaners. How you clean your stamps will depend on the type of ink that you used.

Water-based Inks – the following water-based inks can be cleaned with plain water:

  • Brilliance
  • Distress by Tim Holtz
  • Memento
  • VersaColor
  • VersaCraft
  • VersaFine
  • VersaMark
  • Essential Glue Pad
  • And other water based ink brands

Oil-based Inks – the following oil-based inks can be cleaned with water:

  • Archival – water will not remove the ink residue, but will make it possible to either use the same stamp in another color or do simple clean-up.

Solvent Inks – the following solvent inks need specialty cleaners:

  • Alcohol Inks (you wouldn’t stamp with these) – clean with 91% alcohol or a blending solution
  • Staz-On – clean with Staz-On Cleaner
Clean While Stamping - Between Ink Colors

Clean While Stamping – Between Ink Colors

  • Pigment Inks – If you’re using pigment inks (VersaColor™, VersaFine™ Clair, Tim Holtz Distress® Oxide®, etc) it’s a good idea to clean your stamps between ink colors to keep them from cross contaminating your inks. Just rotate them on a wet cleaning pad with plain water, or stamp several times on a scrap piece of paper.
  • Dye Inks – If you’re using dye inks (Memento™, Archival™, Tim Holtz Distress®, etc) you can actually mix the inks right on your stamp, if you like. To avoid contaminating your lighter ink pads, start with the lightest color and move to the darker ink. If you don’t want to mix colors, then clean between inks as described above.
A Final Cleaning - When Finishing

When you’re done with your project and before storing your stamps, you’ll want to make sure to give them a final cleaning so you’ll be ready to go the next time you pull out your stamps.

Our Favorite Stamp Cleaning Products
Our Favorite Cleaning Products

This is the perfect cleaner for Archival and water-based ink removal. Note there is oil in this cleaner which will repel water-based inks to a certain degree the first time you use it after cleaning your stamps.

For everyday stamp clean up we recommend the Lawn Fawn Stamp Shammy. It’s hard when dry, so just add water and it transforms into a soft stamp cleaning cloth.

For cleaning up polymer clay and acrylic paints, we recommend the Rub It Scrub It pad. It’s great for getting into the grooves of your stamps where clay and paint are sure to hide.

If you really want to use a cleaner on your stamps we love Ultra Clean! This is the perfect cleaner for Archival and water-based ink removal. Now, keep in mind that there is oil in this cleaner which will repel water-based inks to a certain degree the first time you use it after cleaning your stamps.

For cleaning up polymer clay and acrylic paints, we recommend the Rub It Scrub It pad. It’s great for getting into the grooves of your stamps where clay and paint are sure to hide.

For everyday stamp clean up we recommend the Lawn Fawn Stamp Shammy. It’s hard when dry, so just add water and it transforms into a soft stamp cleaning cloth.