This is a tutorial for how to most effectively clean your Cricut mats.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never really bothered, I have always just bought new ones because regardless of how well you clean these mats, they will never be as good as new.
I normally just buy generic brand mats which are just as good. Check out my recommendations here.
I ended up accumulating so many mats I thought I would just give it a try.
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Best method for cleaning your Cricut Mat
If you plan is just to clean your mat, then I would recommend some combination of dish soap and wipes.
Be sure to use soap that doesn’t contain and lotions or conditioner.
If you’re not planning on resticking your mat, then don’t use any products with alcohol or too much oils, it will wipe away the adhesive.
How to prep your mat for cleaning
Yes, there are things you can do to make it a more effective clean. If you make a lot of paper crafts or wood projects, I would highly recommend a lint roller to pick up scraps.
I find doing general roll with the lint roller to pick up loose bits helps. If you don’t have a lint roller, some masking tape or painters tape works too.
I don’t have that many dedicated Cricut clean-up tools but here are the few I have that I love. I use these pieces for every project.
- Spatula Set – The spatula out of all the Cricut brand tools is the only one I actually like. Unfortunately, it only comes in a set with the scraper. The scraper is nice too but it is no different than other branded and non-branded scrapers. I mostly use this spatula to scrape stuff off the mat and peel vinyl.
- Weeding Tools – I’ve tried all the Cricut weeding tools and find them a little clumsy. The balance is off or something. I actually find the Tweezerman Point tweezers to be the best at weeding and just an all-around general tool for everything. Some people like to put a needle in a mechanical pencil which is not bad but that only gets the peeling started. The Tweezerman Point tweezers have a sharp enough point to start the peel but then they are tweezers so you can pick as well.
How to clean Cricut mat with awesome
Awesome is an all purpose brand of concentrated cleaning spray available at a lot of Dollar Stores.
I wouldn’t recommend using it because it contains alcohol which reduces the adhesive coating.
But if you must, I would recommend spraying and then scrapping with a scraper.
How to clean Cricut mat with baby wipes and dawn
The best way I found was a combination of dish soap and a baby wipe. I just drizzled the mat with some soap, then rubbed it around with my hands, added some water and started scrubbing with the wipe.
I tried using a scraper but that really didn’t do much and was less effective than the wipe as getting the fuzzy pieces off.
Then rinse the soap off with your hands. Let the mat air dry for a couple of hours.
As you can see, the mats are not completely clean. This method was really effective at getting the lint like fuzzy pieces off. I’ve used my mat for sticking items like polymer clay and wafer paper and it was less effective at getting that stuff off.
If you want the additional debris off, you’ll have to stripe the adhesive altogether which will require resticking the mat.
How to restick Cricut mat
If you want to add a coat of adhesive, I would recommend using a more aggressive cleaning agent like Goo gone to get the current adhesive off. It’s going to take some effort to scrub some of the current layers off.
After scrubbing your mat, line the outside of the grid with masking tape or painters tape. Then use an adhesive spray like Basking Adhesive.
Give it 15 minutes to dry before adding back the plastic layer.
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