 Hey guys, welcome to Video Friday. So it's November and it was actually snowing outside the art resin studios this morning and it made me think the cold weather is coming, I can't deny it any longer. So you might not know but epoxy resin and cold weather are not friends and what happens is you can get a lot of bubbles in your epoxy resin if it's too cold. So I thought I'd share some of my top tips, my top seven tips for reducing bubbles when you're resining. Okay, so first one. Now depending on your substrate, if you're using wood or paper or any other natural object that can really contain a lot of trapped air that might off gas, sealing first before you apply your resin is always always a good idea. That will create a barrier, it's going to prevent that trapped air from releasing into your resin in the form of bubbles. So sealing your artwork first is my tip number one. Okay, tip number two and as I said, if your resin is cold, it's always a good idea to bring it up to room temperature first before you resin so you can do that in the form of a water bath which I have here. Now also a water bath, you can warm it up and you'll get even less bubbles. It's going to be a thinner consistency and you're going to have next to no bubbles in it but always, always make sure your resin is at room temperature. If you do use a water bath, make sure you thoroughly dry off the bottles. So I always put my bottles in with the lid on so there's no chance any water can get mixed in with the resin but always dry them off thoroughly before you open the cap and pour. Okay, so dry it off, open the cap and then pour. Okay, so that's my second tip. My third tip is to stir slowly, okay, so just stir slowly and steady and scrape the sides and bottom as you go. Now I am really guilty of this, sometimes I really whip my resin as if I'm beating egg whites and I'll show you what happens when you whip, okay, as if you're beating egg whites. I mean you can already see as I'm whipping here, you're just incorporating more and more air, more and more air means more and more bubbles. So remember, when you're stirring, slow and steady is the name of the game. Okay, so tip number four, just as you don't want to whip it too much to incorporate more air in, you also don't want to pour from a really high distance. You want to pour close to your artwork and you want to pour slowly, okay, so just like this, right, compared to pouring a pie and just dumping it out, you're going to get way more bubbles, way more friction bubbles in there, so pour slowly and pour closely. Okay, so tip number five, always make sure you pour in a one-eighth of an inch layer. Art resin was meant to be poured in a thin application, an eighth of an inch, self-levels to an eighth of an inch, so if you're pouring into a mold where you have the opportunity to pour a thicker amount, always pour in a one-eighth of an inch layer and the reason for that is if you pour thicker, bubbles aren't going to have a chance to rise to the top to get torched out, so if you want to pour thicker or pour, make sure you pour in multiple one-eighth of an inch layers. Tip number six is to always use a torch. It's the only method we use here at our resin to get rid of bubbles. Nothing else beats the intensity of a flame to really zap those bubbles, so you can see here, see, it just absolutely incinerates those bubbles, so using a torch is tip number six. Okay, so tip number seven is sometimes you just want to babysit your work a little bit. Now, this is particularly true in the case of resigning wood and paper and those other objects I mentioned that can off-gas, trapped air, any other natural objects. Sometimes after you've poured your resin, everything looks beautiful, you cover it and walk away and then your object can still off-gas a bit, so what I like to do is just check it every, you know, ten minutes or so for the first half an hour. If you do happen to find a bubble that's popped up, you can just pop it with a toothpick. And that's it, those are my top seven tips for eliminating bubbles and stay warm guys, keep your resin warm and we'll see you next week on Video Friday. Video Friday with our resin. Ah, thank god that's over.