 Every now and again, you might come back to check your artwork and your resin is sticky. Don't panic. Don't panic. Don't panic. Sticky resin is nothing to get panicked about. We can fix this. Hey guys, so we all know how easy it is to use our resin. But what happens if you come back the next day and your resin is sticky? You might have a liquidy mess on your hands, you might have soft sticky spots in your resin, or the whole thing might feel tacky even after curing for a few days. Why did this happen and what can we do about it? Well the first thing is don't panic. The second thing is that art resin is super forgiving and we can fix this. And the third thing is to understand why the resin was sticky in the first place, to make sure it doesn't happen again. I'm going to take you through three of the most common sticky situations, explain why it happened, and show you exactly how to fix your work. So let's get started. Now the first thing that we need to understand is that art resin comes in two parts, a resin and a hardener. When you mix these two according to the label instructions, a chemical reaction occurs that takes it from a liquid to a solid. Now if something happens to prevent this chemical reaction from occurring, that's when you end up with a sticky mess. So it's really really important to remember that art resin was formulated to be measured in equal amounts by volume, not by weight. So this means that if you use one ounce of resin, you're going to want to use one ounce of hardener. Okay so measuring accurately is super important. The next important step is to mix thoroughly. So once you have your equal amounts of resin and hardener in your measuring cup, then you want to stir for at least three minutes. And while you stir, you want to make sure you scrape the bottom and you scrape the sides of your container as you mix. Now the reason for that is that if you don't scrape, you might have unmixed resin and hardener stuck to the sides. And then when you pour your resin out, you're pouring unmixed product into your artwork. So measure accurately, mix thoroughly. Those are the two most important steps. Now if you do find yourself with sticky resin, just remember that until you do something to fix it, it's going to stay sticky indefinitely. So this is what we're going to take care of today. Now to fix your sticky resin, you're going to need some tools. The first thing most important, dealing with sticky resin, you're going to want to make sure you've got gloves. So I've got a box of gloves here. You're going to want to have several pairs of gloves as you go. You're also going to want to have paper towel and some spray alcohol to clean up any sticky messes. If you've got runny liquidy resin, it's good to have a scraping tool like this one here. If you've got a flat piece of artwork, you can even use a squeegee that comes in really handy. You're also going to want to have some sandpaper on hand. We like using coarse sandpaper like 80 grid here at Art Resin and you'll want to have a damp paper towel to wipe off any sanding residue. Now the other thing which is really handy is to have your work surface lined with something to protect it like plastic. So I've got a plastic lined workspace here. I also have a piece of parchment paper as well. You could use wax paper too, but I've got a piece of parchment paper that I'm going to scrape my liquidy resin right onto this parchment paper and then I can just bundle it up and toss it in the trash and it makes cleanup super easy. Now the last thing that you need is an apron. You want to keep that sticky resin off of your clothes, throw your hair up and you are good to go. All right, so let me get my gloves on here and we will talk about the very first sticky situation which is liquidy runny wet resin. Now why does this happen? Usually this happens because you've mixed two parts of resin or two parts of hardener instead of mixing one part resin and one part hardener. So there is no chemical reaction happening at all and you end up with a sticky mess on your artwork. Now another common cause of liquid runny resin is adding too much colorant. Now whether you use a liquid pigment or you use a powder pigment adding more than six percent of the total combined volume of resin and hardener will result in liquidy resin. Adding more than six percent throws off that delicate balance between the resin and hardener and it will stay liquidy. So how do we go about fixing this? Well the first thing you need to do is to scrape off all of the liquidy runny resin and then apply a fresh coat of carefully measured and mixed art resin on top. Okay so I'm just going to take my piece here and bring it over our parchment and because this is nice and flat I'm going to use a squeegee so I'll just move this one out of the way. Okay so I've got my squeegee here so this step is really really important. It's good to get it off as best you can because if you do leave any liquidy uncured resin or hardener on your piece it could actually leak out from under your fresh resin coat. So it's really important to scrape it off as best you can. Okay which I'm doing here. Alright okay so that looks good. Now your paper towel and your alcohol come in handy here at this point because you want to wipe off your squeegee so just spritz them on the paper towel and wipe your tools down right away while the resin is still wet. Okay so that looks good and we can just toss this into the trash. Now I'm actually going to put a fresh coat of resin on all three of these pieces at once at the end but I just wanted to point out that your alcohol and paper towel also come in handy the next day after your resin has cured just in case you still have any sticky spots left on the bottom or the sides of your piece from handling it. Okay so wait until your fresh resin coat is dried and then you can use little spritz of alcohol just to clean up any sticky bits that might still be there. Okay so let's go on to our second sticky situation which is tacky resin. Okay so this in this instance there's no liquidy or runny resin. In fact your resin has cured it's just not dry it's tacky to the touch and you can see here if I put my gloved hand on the resin it actually sticks. Now why did this happen? Well once again something has prevented that chemical reaction from taking place more often than not it's a case of inaccurate measuring or under mixing that has stopped the resin and hardener from curing but if you find this has happened to you count yourself lucky because this is actually the easiest fix out of all three sticky situations. If you think temperature might have been the culprit all you need to do is move your piece to a warmer spot and leave it for 24 hours and that should do the trick. If it doesn't and your resin is still tacky then all you need to do is mix up a fresh batch of carefully measured and mixed art resin coated on top and you will never know you ever had sticky resin. Alright so let's move on to our last situation here and that is sticky spots. Now this might present as a mixture of perfectly cured resin dotted with sticky spots you may even have liquidy runny resin as well. Now the reason this happens that you get kind of a mixture of everything is from scraping your resin as you pour from the mixing container. Now we always tell you to scrape really well when you're mixing your resin but you may despite how well you scrape you may have remnants of unmixed resin and hardener stuck to the side of your mixing container so if you're pouring and you scrape these out onto your piece you're pouring unmixed product right into your perfectly catalyzed resin and hardener which will end up giving you sticky spots. Now the fix for this is a little more involved because you do have perfectly cured resin and sticky and potentially runny. Now how do we go about fixing this? Well let's take a closer look at our piece here so we've got the majority of it has cured absolutely perfectly but we've got a big area in the middle here where it's tacky and on this side we've got a big chunk where it's actually liquidy so what we're going to have to do because we have a few different problems we're going to use a couple of different techniques to solve them. So the areas that have perfectly cured are going to need to be sanded down so this is when your sanding paper is going to come in handy remember I said 80 grit you want a coarse sandpaper the reason being is that we want to rough up the surface to create some tooth for our fresh art resin layer to hang on to. Okay so we're going to sand this down these areas here and we just want to rough it up we're not trying to get rid of any imperfections we're just trying to rough up the surface a bit okay so that looks good then we're going to take our damp paper towel and we're going to wipe off as best we can all the sanding residue we don't want any of that sanding dust on our piece before we pour our fresh coat okay perfect now we need to get rid of that liquidy runny resin okay so I'm going to take this scraper this time I've got a piece of parchment paper and I'm just going to scrape off as much of this wet resin as I can so there's a little bit of sticky stuff up here too so I think that looks good and then last remember the tacky resin in the middle we're just going to leave it we don't need to do anything to that okay so now that all of these three pieces have been taken care of I'm going to go ahead and get my resin and hardener and mix up a carefully measured and thoroughly mixed batch of art resin and we're going to pour a fresh coat on each of these pieces all right so I've got my carefully measured and mixed art resin here I went over to art resin dot com slash calculator and I found out that for each of these pieces I would need two ounces so I've got six ounces total in here made up of three ounces of resin and three ounces of hardener and I carefully uh mixed it for three minutes scraping the sides and scraping the bottom as I stirred okay so now I am ready to pour this is the fun part all right all right there's one move on to our next one finally our last one here and notice I'm not scraping so I don't want to repeat the same problem okay so I'll set this aside and get my stick here and I'm just going to spread this out and I'm actually going to dome these pieces I love doming because it's just so nice and clean I don't have to worry about drips okay so that looks good so I'm ready to dome now so I'll just set this aside I'm just going to use a little plastic spatula they come in so handy you can use like a takeout knife as well works beautifully well and I'm just going to nudge the resin right up to the edge without letting it go over the side and it's just going to sit right along the perimeter now if you get good at doming you don't need to tape but you certainly can tape off the bottom if it makes you feel more comfortable all right that looks good okay and now we just want to torch out these bubbles okay so last step now is to cover it to protect it from dust so I've got my dust cover right here and that's a perfect fit we will leave it for 24 hours and see how it looks tomorrow hey friends so our pieces have cured hopefully we're going to check it out now just take our dust cover off they've been sitting overnight so if you remember this first piece had the liquidy runny resin then I had to squeegee off it was absolutely soaking wet and I suspect there is going to be some wet resin underneath so it is cured on top it's perfect but let me just put my gloves on and I'm going to check the underside because I think I had some dripping when I was using the squeegee just take a look here and yes yeah I see there's a whole bunch of wet resin here so this is when your paper towel and your alcohol spray come in handy now that the top has cured perfectly I can clean up the underside without worrying about making a sticky mess okay so I'm just going to grab myself a piece of paper towel and we're going to spread some rubbing alcohol onto it make sure you're wearing gloves for this part and then we'll just flip it over and I don't have to worry this is cured on top and I can just wipe down the underside here there we go that looks good awesome so this piece is perfect so let's move on to our next one this one was the tacky resin and remember I put my glove down I was actually able to lift the entire thing off of the stands so yeah this is perfect so tacky resin is such an easy fix you literally don't have to do anything just pour a fresh coat and you are good to go this is perfect all righty so this is our last piece here now and we're keeping it real folks sometimes things don't work out and you need to go back and do another fix and that is the case with this one here um after I poured yesterday and put the dust cover on I came back to check on them and I noticed that some of the cured resin remember this one had a mixture of cured resin sticky resin and um liquidy runny resin which I scraped off but I noticed that some of the cured resin actually had started to lift up so I've got some areas here that are tacky they're not runny they're just tacky but I've got a raised edge here of cured resin so this is all going to need to be sanded down now because we do have some areas with sticky resin um we are going to end up clogging our sandpaper so you want to make sure that you've got a few pieces of sandpaper on hand and again we want to use 80 grit um a core sandpaper and we want to sand down this imperfection here um so I'm going to go ahead and do that now let me just grab my gloves you definitely want to wear gloves because there are some areas of sticky resin okay so these stands out of the way here so it's perfect everywhere it's just this little ridge right here that raised up so I'm just going to sand that out I'm first I'm going to just start in these areas here that have perfectly cured so I don't use clogged sandpaper okay so now I'm going to start working on this area here with the ridge so we just want to keep sanding until it's perfectly smooth and there's no trace of those ridges left all right let's check this out here actually that feels good I can't feel that ridge anymore so perfect now we are ready to um wipe down our piece and get rid of all of the sanding residue so I'm just going to move my piece over here for a second I'll grab my damp paper towel and we'll get rid of all of this dust here so we don't want that near our fresh resin so we'll just wipe it down with a damp paper towel and this is just water on here so you can see the piece looks destroyed but you will see when we put the fresh resin on all of these scratch marks are going to disappear okay so let me mix up a fresh batch of carefully measured and carefully mixed art resin and we will fix this again all right so I've got my mixed art resin here I've got one ounce of resin one ounce of hardener I mixed thoroughly for three minutes I scraped the sides and I scraped the bottom as I stirred and now I am ready to pour so here we go and I've got my little tool here I'm just gonna dome it like I love to do so here's the area here that had that ridge that I sanded down and you cannot feel that at all it's completely smooth all right looks good and now I'm ready to torch okay all the bubbles are gone looking good so we're gonna cover it up and tomorrow we will reveal one more time all righty so our resin has cured let's take a look perfect it looks perfect it feels perfect it's no longer tacky it's hard it's smooth so you know sometimes it may take a couple of tries but believe me sticky resin is nothing to get panicked about okay so if you do find yourself a sticky resin remember if it's a liquidy you have to scrape it off if it's tacky leave it if you've got areas that have cured perfectly you want to sand those down before you pour on your fresh coat of art resin and to avoid sticky resin in the first place make sure you resin in a nice warm environment don't add too much color in and most important follow the label directions so that means measuring accurately by volume that means mixing thoroughly that means scraping the sides of the container and that means not scraping when you pour and if you follow those instructions you will end up with a perfect glossy hard resin coat and that's it please leave any questions in the comments below and we will see you next time