Despite the fact that I have been out of college for 12 years, I can’t fully shake the bad habit I developed there of writing important things on my hand.
Only these days, I can’t hang with the lack of sleep as well as I could in my very early twenties, and as a result, on more than one occasion I have used permanent marker on my hands and realized it only when(unsuccessfully) trying to remove it.
Oops.
Hopefully you aren’t as dim-witted as me when it comes to writing on your body, but you just may have a child in your life who has in the past found a permanent marker and decided to decorate themselves with it. If this has never happened to you, get ready. It totally will.
I can tell you how to remove permanent marker from glass, and now I can tell you how to remove permanent marker from skin. I just wish I could blame my research on my kids. No dice. This one is totally my own fault.
Ok, so here’s what you need!
1. Quality eye makeup remover (my personal favorite is the Mary Kay Oil-Free Eye Makeup Remover, but go with whatever you like)
2. a cotton ball
3. A marker for doing it all over again. Just kidding.
Simply moisten the cotton ball with the eye makeup remover and give your skin a firm(ish) scrubbing. See how it is coming off?
Just a few more seconds of scrubbing, and the mistake is erased!
So there you have it; a rather simple solution to a very silly mistake. I hope it helps you out!
And just in case some other mishaps occur in your home, you may want to check out these other helpful “how do I get this off?!” posts:
How to remove permanent marker from glass
How to remove crayon from painted walls
How to remove crayon from painted wood
Anonymous says
Years ago when I worked as a summer camp counselor, I learned that sunscreen takes sharpie marker off of skin as well. No scrubbing needed, just a lot of sunscreen and slather is around for a minute, them wipe off. We used SPF 50 & 70, I’m not sure if that makes a difference. We had a couple of campers that decided to “tattoo” their WHOLE bodies. The camp owner was PISSED, because the parents were going to be FURIOUS!!! Low and behold the next time we had to re-up on the sunscreen, it all started to come off. From that day forward my group of kids was ALWAYS tatted up…up until their parents arrived, then I delivered them their unmarked angels at the end of the day. LOL!!!
NoNameRequired says
Hand sanitizer is the best (and cheapest) way to remove permanent marker.
Rosemarie says
Hello, I wanted to say thank you for your remedy for removing permanent marker from glass.
SinceI have my small grand children over quite a bit. My youngest granddaughter has a fascination sharpies. On a number of occasions she has come to me with her arms and legs decorated with marker. I wish I had known about the eye-makeup remover you mentioned. But through trial and error, the next best thing I finally found was plain GLYSCRIN emollient. It works great. So I thought I would pass this remedy to you. I bought my daughter two bottles and suggested your eye- makeup remover. Happy to say so far so good.
Tiffany Merritt says
So glad it was helpful, and glad you found another solution, too! Thank you for sharing!