Removing Chalkboard Marker - Fail

I haven't had a fail in a while, especially a DIY fail.

My baby girl turned one a little under a month ago, and for her birthday I made one of those chalkboard signs. I searched on Pinterest for inspiration and text examples and freehanded the full thing. And I think it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself!

Hey look, I'm crafty!

Michaels was having a BOGO on chalkboards to I bought two, plus some regular chalk and chalkboard markers, which I used on the birthday sign. My plan was to reuse the large board and the markers for other events, like my son going to Kindergarten, Christmas, etc.

Now I fully admit this is partially on me. It could have been a) the markers I bought, even though the Michaels employee told me they were erasable b) the type of chalkboard I bought or c) the length of time I left the original art on the chalkboard. Which was almost a month. 
oops

At least I remembered to prime my chalkboard before I started.
With the first day of school around the corner, I wanted to get on my newest art project and redo the chalkboard for my son. This is the point where I realized that this stuff doesn't come off. It did wipe off with a wet cloth when I was making the chalkboard and made an error, but it's pretty set it now. 

So here is the methods I used to try to remove the chalkboard marker in levels of lack-of-success

Water and a damp cloth
Fail. Made no impact. Don't even bother.

Soap and hot water
See above. Just move right on.

Magic Eraser
Ok so these things are a-maze-ing. They'd clean just about everything and a few Pins said this would solve my chalkboard dilemma. On the plus side it did remove the majority of the marker, however it took almost the whole eraser and a LOT of elbow grease, and there is still a shadow left and even some marker.

Magic Eraser with Vinegar
Slight improvement from just the Magic Eraser with water, but not much.

Windex
Well I don't have Windex but I have window cleaner. I tried it and it didn't help.

So after trying ALL of these methods on my chalkboard I'm left with this.


Most of the colour is off, but the shadow is still there. And now it seems that the marker has actually REMOVED the chalkboard paint behind it, exposing the wood board. And it has also puckered in places, probably due to the amount of moisture.

The final product. You can still see a lot of the text, and the most visible parts are where the chalkboard paint has come off

So after a lot of work it looks ok. If I'm mindful of how I use it in future (using regular chalk from now on) I can hopefully cover most of the bad spots. Or I may just go get some chalkboard paint and repaint it. 

I'm glad the chalkboard was cheap.

So learn from me...IF you use Chalkboard Markers, they are NOT for porous surfaces. And if you do use them on standard chalkboard and want to reuse it, wipe off your projects asap or use vinyl chalkboard. Or just use regular chalk.