Tonight I received a message from a lovely customer stating that she had read reviews about these ink pads on one particular shopping super site complaining about how horribly unwashable they were.
I don't want to rave about a product if there is any doubt in my faith of the statements I am making. Her question made me doubt myself so I set out to do an experiment.
-Image one shows my arm pre-inking.
-Image two shows my hand inked up with pink, red, orange, yellow, lime, turquoise, violet, brown and black inks. I stamped the purple twice and put the black in a conspicuous location because these two are the colors I feared might not wash off quite so easily.
-Image three is the after shot. I left the ink on my arm through dinner (which thrilled my daughters and gave us all sorts of interesting things to discuss). So after having the ink on my arm for about half and hour I washed it one time with Method dish washing soap.
You can see that the black didn't come off completely, the purple left a slight haze and I am able to identify where the red ink was. I have since then (2 hours have passed) washed my hand two times. The purple is just about gone, I cannot see the red but the black is still visibly the image of a soccer ball.
This arm received the same treatment as the other. The inks (in order of appearance) are My First Color Box, Color Box Pigment, Color Box Acid Free Archival and my favorite permanent ink, Staz On. After about 30 minutes I washed this arm with Method dish washing liquid. The only one to come off completely was the Color Box Pigment ink. The one that came off the least was the washable kiddo ink.
So, what do I have to say about my findings?
I love My First Color Box ink pads. They come in a plethora of awesome colors. They aren't too juicy so they can't be squished all over. They have a raised edge around the ink pad it self so that if turned upside down the ink pad won't make an impression at all (on a flat surface like the table...it would surely mark on carpet). I have been using some of mine for almost 4 years and they still work fantastically. They fit together in a stack to keep them nice and neat and best of all they are made in the U.S.A.
I started the experiment suspecting that there might be a problem with black, purple and red. Why? Because these are the same colors that take a bit of work to remove when it comes to Crayola markers, paint and bathtub crayons. Our Melissa and Doug bath crayons also lingered a while on the walls when purple, red and black were used. I admit those colors "disappeared" from my kids' collection after only a use or two.
I stand firm in my recommendation of Clear Snap's My First Color Box ink. Just don't give your child black ...and maybe avoid the purple (but it wasn't bad) if you have family portraits the next day.