Varnish removal

That sounds a difficult one to solve. The size of the painting doesn't help, any "rough handling" will probably show up, with a larger painting I would probably try gentle sanding and a re coat of varnish. Re spray varnish, I just can't get away with that. The nozzle keeps blocking after each spray, even tho' it's been stored upside down etc - good make too. I much prefer using a brush. Anyway, good luck.

I doubt if a spray varnish would be much of an improvement, and I agree with Marjorie about the problem with it. These are small paintings though, so I see your logic - a quick spray in one pass would probably do the job. Could you take another look at the bottle of varnish you did use: is it a ketone resin? (Information should be on the back label.) If it is, then it should be removable with White Spirit, working carefully over the whole painting with cotton-buds to lift the varnish off - and being very careful not to damage the surface of the acrylic once you get to it: e.g. don't rub away at it too hard, having a piece of absorbent but lint-free cloth to hand to blot the loosened varnish away from the paint. If you succeed in getting the varnish off - and it sounds rather as if you were quite generous with it, or it would have yielded to the varnish remover (a gentler product) - then wipe the paintings down with a moist cloth (i.e. dipped in tepid water); then dry them; and re-varnish in a few days - but I wouldn't use a ketone resin again; Golden Paint Co and Liquitex, among others, make varnish especially formulated with acrylic. Finally, and apologies if this sounds patronizing because I'm sure you know your painting better than I do - are you quite sure that these lumps ARE actually congealed varnish, and not bits of paint that the varnish has accentuated? Because I don't think I've ever painted an acrylic yet (and that's a LOT of acrylics) without leaving small lumps in the paint that I didn't notice until I varnished them - other than those done in a very dilute technique on watercolour paper. Normally they don't matter, even adding to the texture, but in a very small painting I can quite see they'd stand out to you like a sore thumb. You can sometimes pick these off and re-paint, with all the risks that might entail (e.g. peeling). Best of luck with it - and if you go to the Will Kemp art school's website (willkempartschool.com) there's a question and answer page and he's VERY good at answering questions; varnishing acrylics was coming up a lot, when I last visited it.