Unclog your spray bottles

If you've visited my blog before, you know I LOVE to use sprays and I enjoy using a variety of them. I ♥ Dylusions ink sprays for their vibrancy, but I also have some Adirondack (strong colour) 

and some Starburst sprays that have lovely sparkle

and have made my own as well from distress reinkers mixed with perfect pearls (recipe HERE) and also used golden airbrush colours in spray bottles - they are great because they are permanent once dry.
I even have tags sprayed with all my different spray colours so know what I've got - this photo was pre-Dylusions availability I think :-)

Lately, though, I felt like every second spray bottle I picked up was clogged! Not actually true, but I decided I needed to sort them out. First thing was to test them all. Don't want to waste spray so I did this inside my journal. I used Dyan Reaveley's method of dividing my sprays into "hot" colours (pinks, oranges, hot yellows, and browns) and "cool" colours (blues, greens, cool yellows, teals).

Her method means you shouldn't get mud - and although I have a bit much brown in this first one for my liking (because I included my browns, blacks and purples here), it's all good for a background.

I tested all my inks on my pages, and set aside the ones that weren't spraying properly

Then it was time to deal to the clogged bottles. Easiest way to fix this, put hot water in your sink, remove the sprayer, and hold it under the hot water and swirl it around a bit to dislodge any blockages. Then lift it out so just the end of the tube is in the water, make sure the nozzle is facing towards the water, and pump until it starts to spray.

For most of my bottles, they released and sprayed properly almost immediately. It was so quick to do that I was left wondering why I had left it so long to do this! When I took them back to re-test them, a couple weren't spraying evenly, and a couple had hardly any ink left, but for the most part, I fixed the ones that hadn't been working, and another hot water soak and vigorous spray pumping fixed most of the rest. I have only 1 bottle that needed to be swapped to a different spray nozzle!
And now I can get on with my daily journaling with a ready-sprayed spread :-)