Costco and my Cricut Imagine

A few weeks ago I was working on a scrapbooking project where I was using my cricut imagine to print some paper.  It was a double layout, and the first page of paper printed well, but the second had streaks and lines in it.  I did a cleaning of the print heads via the machine and that did not help.  I figured I needed new ink.  I have been pricing the ink at Staples, Walmart etc and found the best price of $65.00 for a colour cartridge.  While playing online one day I found that Costco refills original ink cartridges, and it does so for between $9 and $12 dollars, I checked to make sure my ink could be refilled, and it could.  Well today my husband had to go to Costco so I asked him to take my cartridge and have it refilled.  The clerk told my husband to just clean the print heads with a clorox wipe and clean the resevoir.  He said that my cartridge had over 70% ink still.  Well, I came home and did just that, I am so happy with the results.  I wanted to share because this has saved me a ton of $$.
After cleaning.

This is what came off the cartridge and the resevoir.

 

I hope this post saves people some money.