Matte who?

Art journaling was my passion just before diving into Bible journaling (or journaling in my Bible).  While learning about art journaling and all the sorts of mediums, I began using lots of matte decoupage and matte gel medium to glue and seal my projects and pages.  They are, both, wonderful products.  The gel is just more thick than the decoupage.

Well, I got to wondering....could I actually use decoupage as a sealer for my Bible pages.  So I took the risk and tried it on the very first page of scripture in the Bible, Genesis 1!  I applied a thin layer of my favorite matte decoupage, Aleen's, to the entire page and dried it with my heat gun.  When I do this, I always put a piece of parchment paper under the page to prevent the next page from gluing to the page I am sealing.  Then, I colored around the edges with some up & up watercolor gel crayons and Crayola Twistable Slick Sticks.  These work much like gelatos and are much more affordable.  They just aren't as high of a quality and don't come in the variety of colors.  This part of the process takes more experimentation and is just a matter of artist interpretation.  I really like the gold Slick Stick color because you can add just a couple scribbles of it and it will add a slight shimmer to the area where you "paint" it. 
After drying with the heat gun I added some number stickers from Mambi to label each of the days of the Creation.  The pages is still a little crumpled looking, but it will smooth out a little while the pages are closed and under the weight of the Bible itself.  It's a simple page, but I like it.   Trust your instincts and try something new!

Treating your Bible pages to prevent bleeding.

There are so many wonderful types of medium to use in your art, but they don't all work on Bible pages.  I have ripped pages that were too wet and bled through stacks of pages with ink.  So I wondered what would happen if I treated the pages with gesso or matte gel medium.
I took our Family Scripture Keeper Bible (not a technical term, just our name) and treated two of the not-so-essential pages.  One with gesso and one with the gel medium.

 I decided on a few types of inks and paint that I frequently use and would like to use (below).  Then I also decided to add a drop of  acrylic ink and a drop of alcohol ink (not pictured).

I applied them to the gessoed page (left) and the matte medium page (right). 

 After a couple hours of drying time this is how the pages looked from the backside.  Below is the opposite side of the page that was coated with gesso.  The only thing that seemed to seep through was the alcohol ink.  The only reason I think it came through was because I only put a thin layer of gesso on the page.  I did this so that the page could still be, somewhat, legible.  I figured that if you are going to use this in a journaling Bible, then you would probably still want to read the page.  (Please avert your eyes from the washi tape.  The pages where ripped to begin with.)

 The page with the matte gel medium has more leakage than the gesso page.  However, the only things that ran through where those that were of intense color, like the alcohol ink and acrylic ink.  You could see ghosts of the Pitt pen and watercolor, but not to the point of being a distraction on the backside of the page.

Destruction of my Bible is not something I look forward to and you probably don't either!  Hopefully this will help you to know when you need to treat your pages before journaling and with which medium.  Please let me know if you have tried any other mediums to coat your pages and how it worked out.  Now go try something new today!