Ball Point Pen "ART" on my Sofa!! HELP!

My 4 year-old son just drew me 7 lovely balloons, in blue ballpoint ink pen, on my new sofa from Crate and Barrell. If it is any help, it was a basic Papermate brand blue ink pen. The sofa is made of that new material that looks like suede, yet is microfiber. It is a light tan, so the "ART" my son drew really shows.

Ironically, he drew on a lovely cotton twill fabric covered chair a few months back, and in a panic I doused it with some Oxyclean and made a big bleach-out mark on the seat cushion. (Luckily, I could just flip the cushion over).

Don't be too hard on my son, I shouldn't leave pens out within reach, and, he has autism, so he thinks he really is making pretty pictures for me....

 

Rubbing alcohol on a clean rag, blotting from the outside of the stain inward to prevent spreading. If you think this will be an ongoing problem, might be a good idea to get a couch cover.

 

Make sure the rag you use for blotting the ink stain is white. This is to make sure that no dyes are imparted from rag to upholstery. Blot from outside stain toward middle to prevent spreading.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I did use the rubbing alcohol, but used individual Q-tips instead of a white rag for fear of spreading the ink. I used an intire box of Q-tips, in order not to redeposit the ink into the fabric, and it worked beautifully. It was very time consuming to do it this way, but I was able to work on a small area at a time, to ensure all the stains came out. I got out about 90% of the stain, which makes me pretty darn happy. After it dried, I used my Bissell (?) floor carpet cleaner to steam clean any stain residue left behind. When that dried, I used a nail brush to restore the nap. Now, you'd never know the stain was ever there.. (unless you got on your hands and knees and looked for it).

I will say, the microfiber suede-like material worked to my advantage, being that it is a polyester/acrylic type fabric. We had a similar incident last year on a cotton twill fabric chair pad, I was unsuccessful at removing the ball point ink, and wound up just flipping the cushion over as I made a bleached out area with some Oxyclean I used.

Ah well, lesson learned. Maybe covering the furniture isn't such a bad idea