Mr Philofaxy saved the day!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's  Mr Philofaxy and he has saved the day! You might remember that I asked for help removing a pen mark from my Original Filofax the other week, if not you can read the post here.  I called on Mr Philofaxy A.K.A Steve Morton and he came to my rescue!

This is the offending mark I found.  Right on

the front cover!

Steve suggested using a cotton bud dipped in alcohol to try first and to test it on a hidden part of the leather just in case it damaged it.  I have had a vodka miniature sat on the shelf for years and years so I decided to break the seal and use a little of that.  

I rubbed the vodka moistened cotton bud on the inside of the back cover and then left it for a little while to check nothing happened to the leather or finish.  It looked ok so I started to rub the pen mark gently and could see it getting lighter.  I did have to rub it a bit harder to get all of the ink off but this took off a little of the finish too.  I guess I hadn't rubbed the test area hard enough so if you are ever in the same situation I recommend really giving it some welly when you do your pre removal tests so you get a proper idea of how it will affect your Filofax.

The pen mark is gone! You can barely see 

where it was.

I much prefer a slightly lighter patch of leather on the front than the black pen mark and you can only really notice it in certain lights so overall I would say it was a success.  Lots of lovely people on Facebook suggested products I could try to restore the finish but to be honest I would rather leave it as it is than risk making it worse.

I have angled my filo for this photo so you

can see where it has taken the 

shine off the leather.

I did contact Filofax themselves first to ask if they had any ideas on removing the ink.  They got back to me quickly but said they couldn't recommend anything because of the Original's finish so I would like to say a great big thank you to Steve for his help and to everyone who commented on my post on Facebook and here on my blog.....

Thank you!!