Copic marker maintenance

Hey crafty peeps and copic lovers! I have a tip to share with you today. I'm cleaning my markers and figured I would share what I have learned in the process. 

When I decided to clean my markers (I have the full collection, it won't be a quick process to do them all! LOL) I thought I would "just" buy another bottle of the colorless blender as I am down to about one third of a bottle (which I use to fill my colorless blender markers). But when I searched online to find it, I was disappointed! Since the new ink refills came out recently, (new shape, smaller size, same price) the price of the 200ml bottle of the blender has tripled in price, which has made it difficult to even find except eBay. So I did some looking around. 

The colorless blender is 77% alcohol. I figured I'd give plain old isopropyl alcohol a try and see how it stood up. All I had at the time was 70% alcohol, but I hoped it would be strong enough. 

These are some of the grody caps before:

I dumped some alcohol and the caps, a few at a time, into a small tupperware container and shook them up real good. Surprise! It worked pretty good!! 

Once they looked clean, I removed the lid and dipped a Qtip in the alcohol to swab the marker tips. Rinse the caps in the sink with water, dry the inside with a Qtip. I was so excited. LOL

Woohoo, first batch done. So fresh and so clean, just like new! Now to clean the remaining 352+  markers. LOL 

So, in summary, here is my verdict on alcohol vs colorless blender.

To start, colorless blender is 77% alcohol, so ideally, you'll want 77% or higher volume alcohol. Alcohol cleans equally as well as the colorless blender. I have not used it to fill my marker for blending, but have read that others have done this with excellent results. (I don't have an empty marker or I would try it now and share my own results.) 

Cost comparison:

$  2.00 +/- 16 oz. 90% isopropyl alcohol 

$35.00 +/- 6.6 oz. colorless blender (we're being played people!)

I hope this has been helpful!