Bible Journaling: New Year

Happy New Year to all my loyal readers and Studio guests! A new year is a great time to resolve to start something new – it just so happens I’m starting a new teaching session each month looking at Bible journaling. It’ll be on the third Monday evening, starting in January. For the first session, we’ll look at materials and media, as well as embarking on our first journaling.

In the meantime, I’ve done some more journaling that I thought I would share. First up, a verse for the new year in both my NIV and NLT journaling Bibles:

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Bible Journaling: Stencils

I recently took up bullet journaling as a means of recording what I intended to do each week alongside what I actually did (or didn’t). I thought it would be helpful to have some visual prompts for my pages, so invested in a set of stencils designed for bullet journalers. Well, the bullet journaling lasted about 8 months, but the stencils hung around and I started using them in my Bible journaling instead. There was just one problem – they were too big to use in the margins of my journaling Bible. So, this week, I created my own to fit!

Here are some journal entries demonstrating my stencils in use:

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Bible Journaling: Christmas 2018

The weather outside is frightful – the risk of freezing rain didn’t amount to much, but it’s cold, dark, blustery with heavy rain. As a result, I am in a toasty warm studio with pencils and pens out and doing some Bible journaling. I thought I’d take some of the less familiar scripture verses that are relevant to the Christmas story and develop some graphics to capture them in my margins.

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Bible Journaling: Another November release

I’m not exactly busy in The Studio at the moment – I’m no longer doing TV prep and I’m not on any design teams, so I’m left to my own devices. I have plenty of time, as a result, to do my own thing. At the moment, it’s developing tangle patterns and Bible journaling – and prepping for my craft stall on Friday and Saturday (Lutterworth Town Hall, F: 5-9pm, S:10am – 4pm if you’re interested).

For this release of Bible journaled verses, I kept to my general style, but I have added a couple of sketches (one thanks to free-to-use Armour of God from ChristianityCove.com). I also added a motivational phrase to illustrate the verse – this is the first time I have used text other than the verse itself. As is now normal, I have used coloured pencils and fine tip pigment pens to avoid bleed-through.

Now seems to be a good opportunity for a plug… Starting on the third Monday in January, I will be hosting a Bible Journaling Session here at The Studio from 7:30-10pm, £5. We’ll look at materials and methods and then have themes for the evenings such as lettering, colouring techniques and using different media to decorate our Bibles.

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Bible Journaling: Old & New

I’ve been busy Bible journaling, trying to get back into the habit of reading and reflecting on what it is I am drawing. I’ve found my own style now, and my process still begins with choosing the words or phrases I’d like the emphasis to rest on in my illustration. Next is playing with typography, something I now prefer to do on screen – the undo function creases the page less than trying to rub out pencil lines! Then follows adding illustrations where appropriate, before tracing and colouring into my Bible.

One benefit of working in this way is that there is a FREE downloadable version containing all five outlines for you to print out and do your own thing with… just click the button:

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Art Journal Page: Whizz Bang Pop Fireworks

It’s time for my monthly art journal session on Monday evening, and it coincidently happens on 5th November – fireworks night. It seemed fitting, therefore, to have a suitably explosive theme ‘whizz, bang, pop’. There are spaces available, just let me know if you’d like to come.

Here’s my take on the theme:

fireworksUsed in this layout

  • [amazon_textlink asin=’B0027IPO9K’ text=’Daler Rowney A5 Graduate Sketchbook’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’themanicstamp-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’7a4aab6a-deb9-11e8-a7db-5beea6900017′]
  • [amazon_textlink asin=’B005IW0V5E’ text=’Pebeo India Ink’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’themanicstamp-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’53a18e8d-deba-11e8-b0cb-df05dd28237d’]
  • Ranger / Tim Holtz Distress Stains: Picket Fence/Candied Apple/Mermaid Lagoon/Mowed Grass/Mustard Seed
  • Ranger Stickles: Xmas Red/Tickled Pink, Yellow/Gold, Blue Bayou/True Blue, Green/Firefly

Art Journal: Board Books

It’s not often that I deliberately go into a cut-price bookstore with the sole intention of buying several copies of ‘My Little Pony’ children’s books. Well, this happened sometime in late winter, with the intention that I would be using them in a class. On Monday 1st October, attendees at my art journal session will be using the board books as a base for an art journal, included at no extra fee. Unfortunately, it does mean that my little ponies will be painted out. What a shame.

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Art Journal Page: Hexagonal Monoprinting

Hexagonal MonoprintingIt has been a little while since I have had my gel plates out, so I thought it was time to play a little with monoprinting into my journal. The experimentation was also inspired by the delivery of several texture printing plates made from rubber from Carabelle Studio. These are designed to be used with gel plates, and have text the right way round rather than a mirror image as found on rubber stamps. This means that text is monoprinted the right way round, and if used as background stamps in art journals, for example, it’s the wrong way round. The texture plates are very easy to use – just lay them across a painted gel plate, lift and then print with the gel plate.

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Bible Journaling: Deuteronomy 6:5

It’s not one of my go-to books, but this verse from Deuteronomy was one of the readings I delivered last Sunday in church. We are perhaps more familiar with the New Testament context of Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:27) and then His response to the question ‘which commandment is the greatest in the Law?’ (Matt 22:37).

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Art Journal Page: Collaged Chrysanthemum

It seems that for the last few days my corner of blog land has been out of service due to a duff plugin. Apologies! Here’s another art journal spread to make up for the absence (not that anyone noticed and let me know!). I experimented with collaging papers for the background and unifying the whole layout with a blanket stencil design. Masking off the area intended for the stamp and covering with gesso helped take the busyness away behind the ‘mum. It’s the first outing for my new Dusty Concord Distress Oxide ink pad. I’m not sure if it’s all a bit much, but experimentation is the name of the game in my journal.

art journal page chrysanthemum Continue reading