Slime is a make-at-home, do-it-yourself science project masquerading as art, that even craft-challenged people can undertake. But what happens when you gather the ingredients, put everything into a bowl, and, sadly, the whole thing is too hard? Or what if you've had the slime for a while and find that over time it got too stiff and useless? Don't freak out because we can tell you what to do when your slime is too hard.

DIY slime projects sounds so easy, but it doesn't take much to throw the whole thing off and make it too stretchy, too goopy, or too hard. If you find it's too stiff, often all that's needed to reinvigorate your slime is the addition of one or two ingredients. The softeners may vary based on what type of slime you have created. Many slime recipes call for glue (like Elmer's), baking soda and saline solution. Other recipes substitute borax for the baking soda and saline. Make sure to follow the recipe carefully because what you are actually doing is creating a chemical reaction between the ingredients that causes the slime to start sticking together. It's not quite a liquid, not quite a solid. Maddie Rae's Slime Making website refers to it as a "non-Newtonian fluid" in honor of Sir Isaac Newton, who the site describes as doing, "a ton of work with mathematics, gravity, motion, and fluids." The more you knead it, the more the molecules cling to each other and the more it becomes the slime you would expect.

Unfortunately, you can follow everything to the perfectly-measured T and still end up with a #fail. Not to worry — there are plenty of ways to troubleshoot your slime before you decide to throw the whole thing in the garbage. To warn you, it may get messier before it really starts to come together, but it'll be worth the patience. And even in failure, your kids may still learn something about chemistry.