If you’re ever in a thrift store that writes their prices in permanent marker, I have a fix for that, too. That left me with an extra stain to remove. The paper towel became saturated too quickly, and some of the color transferred to the back of the shirt. One Tip If You Decide to Try It: Use a folded up rag behind the stain, instead of a paper towel. It takes some work, but I think that’s to be expected. So, WD-40 will indeed remove grease pencil from clothing. That removed the oil stain and the rest of the grease pencil stain. There was a faint oil stain in the area that I had treated.ĭish liquid is great for removing oil stains, so I squirt some on the stain, and rubbed vigorously. I let the shirt air dry because I wanted to see if the WD-40 would leave a stain behind. I sprayed the stain with WD-40 again, and continued to rub the stain.īefore long almost all traces of the “X” were gone, and there was just a faint pink stain in the area that I had treated. Designed to work on a multitude of surfaces including glass, plastic and metal the Stabilo All pencil is an alternative to. At this point, it looked like this test was going to be a big fat failure, but I kept at it. That worked, but it also smeared the dye around on the shirt. I started by dabbing at the stain with a paper towel, but that wasn’t breaking up the grease pencil, so I resorted to rubbing. Then, I let it sit for a few minutes to give it a chance to go to work on the stain. I sprayed the grease pencil “X” liberally with WD-40. Then, I folded up a paper towel, and put it inside the shirt behind the stain, so the grease pencil would transfer to it, rather than the back of the shirt. I drew a big red “X” on this ribbed cotton hoodie. I was curious to see if this trick would also remove grease pencil from clothing, so I conducted a test to find out. Now, I can wear my new Keens without feeling like Minnie Pearl. He sprayed a little onto a rag, rubbed it into the markings, and it worked beautifully. That worked, but required A LOT of elbow grease. When we got home, we started experimenting. This pair of Merrells had the price written on the bottom, so we started with them.

Still, $12.99 for a pair of Keens is just too good to pass up (they retail for around $90), so I bought them, and several other things, and decided it was high time we devised a way to remove grease pencil. I hate that! Worse still, they write the prices on the sides of most of their shoes, which means the brand new pair of Keen sneakers that I found had a big $12.99 written on the side. But a large number of our finds came from a store that uses grease pencil (aka China marker) to mark their prices. We found some killer deals at thrift stores while we were on vacation last week, like all of these shoes that you see above.

China pencil