Mediums Many craft manuals recommend acrylic mediums as the best adhesives for making collage. Gels, glazes, and polymer mediums are all quite versatile, and most are great for adhering paper to various surfaces as well as creating texture on top of paper. Gels can be pigmented with fluid acrylics to add tints to decorative papers. Glazing liquids are sometimes very effective in stiffening otherwise thin papers, such as Thai Unryus and Nepalese Loktas. Both have been used in bookbinding for centuries, and they continue to be the favorites of most book artists.
Plant based glues such as wheat starch paste and methylcellulose are naturally archival.
Rabbit skin glue and wheat starch paste are prepared by adding certain amounts of water to the dry powders, cooking the solution in a double boiler over medium-high heat, and then cooling the mixture in cold water. When cooled, the resulting glues may be further diluted with water. Organic adhesives, especially wheat starch and methylcellulose, can also be used as sizing agents when preparing paper for watercolors. One may either soak a sheet of unsized paper in a large container or brush the solution onto the desired surface.