Thursday, November 20, 2014

Cricut Mats...for all us "thrifty" people!


Don't you hate it when your Cricut & Silhouette mats loose their stickiness. I know I do and at $10 or $11 a mat it can tend to get expensive after awhile. I was surfing through Pinterest last night and came across all these great tips for renewing the mats. Here are the easy steps:

1. Take your mat and with warm water and any mild dish soap (I used Palmolive) and one of those plastic/rubber scrubbers and scrub the mat well to take off all the lint and paper bits that end up on them through all the use. You can also use one of those Mr Clean Magic erasers rather than the dish soap & scrubber to take off all the lint.

2. Let your mat air dry, this is important as you don't want to dry with towels or paper towels as you'll just put lint right back onto it. Once it's all dry you can feel it with your hand to see if it's sticky enough for you. Both of my mats were quite sticky after it air dried so I didn't do the next steps.

3. If you want your mat stickier take some masking tape or painter's tape and tape off the edges of the mat. This is done so you don't get the sticky glue on those edges where the rollers of the machine will run over it and start getting them sticky, which would not be a good thing for the machine.


 4. Once you have the edges taped off you can use some "Krylon Easy-Tack" or "Quilt Basting Spray" and spray the mat with it and then let air dry. You can also use "Zig 2 Way Glue" wide tip and just run down the mat from top to bottom with the the glue and let it air dry. Once the mat has air dried if you think the mat is too sticky you can condition it by place your hands on and off the whole mat.

**Disclaimer: Using the above methods to recondition your mats may void the warranty.

I hope you'll try this out and that it works as well for you as it did for me, I love anything that will save me money! Have a great day!