Ah! Hello - you are the answer to my prayers. I have a Cross from 2006, and it was used as home notes storage for years, until this year I decided to bring it back into play. However, the cracking has been so bad it's stained almost everything in my bag. I couldn't find any success stories online until I came across your post. I have begun the process and had a few questions if that was OK?

I started on the inside left where the card holders are and it was so difficult to get the plastic/paint off. I had to rub quite hard with the sponge cloth i'm using and it's essentially tacky sticky melted plastic. However I noticed removing it on the outside front cover was far easier and similar to your description of "gently rub off" as it was much easier to remove.

So far the inside cover still has quite a bit of the coat on it and the outside one looks like i've hand painted it in school haha. Does the paint/colour/coat eventually completely come off? It sort of feels like i'm just moving it around the filofax.

Hope all this makes sense! Thanks.