Bible Journaling: Stencils

Posted on 20th December 2018 by Neil

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

Posted on 15th December 2018 by Neil

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

Posted on 26th November 2018 by Neil

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: The Bishop’s School of Prayer Pair

Posted on 18th May 2018 by Neil

For last week’s Bishop’s School of Prayer, I created two more print-and-colour Bible journaling illustrations. They weren’t used in the end as I (strongly) encouraged workshop participants to create their own.

To download a free copy of these illustrations for your own use, click button:

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Bishop’s School of Prayer, 2018: Praying Hands

Posted on 14th May 2018 by Neil

I’ve just returned from the inaugural Bishop’s School of Prayer, hosted at Launde Abbey by Bishop Martyn Snow. I was dubbed ‘artist-in-residence’ and was responsible for creative input, visual prayer workshops and an artist’s overview of the four-day conference. It was an amazing experience, and I hope it happens again (though probably won’t be annual).

As a ‘corporate act of art’, I created a pair of praying hands and invited attendees to add their own prayers and intercessions. After a short will-they-won’t-they period, they came good and prayers were stuck on steadily over the time at the School. For more details on the making, read on below, but in the meantime here are some pics of the finished sculpture, which will be remaining at Launde Abbey.

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Arts in Worship: Prayer Tiles

Posted on 17th April 2018 by Neil

As regular readers may remember, I’m going to be artist-in-residence at this year’s inaugural Bishop’s School of Prayer, 9th-13th May at Launde Abbey in Leicestershire. There are three full days, the afternoons of which will feature workshops led by the day’s teachers, myself and the musician-in-residence. I’ve been prepping some potential workshop projects, and here are a couple of experiments that have made the grade:

There are still spaces available for the course, with both residential spaces and day passes. I do hope you will join Bishop Martyn and the other teachers and leaders for what is essentially a three-day conference on prayer.

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Bible Journaling: Keep on Knocking

Posted on 18th March 2018 by Neil

I’ve tried another bible journaling experiment – this time using an image transfer technique. The text and image are printed on a laser printer, and the toner is essentially glued to the page and the paper is taken off. The colouring behind the text is acrylic paint, dabbed on and off with a baby wipe. A little tweaking with coloured pencils and it’s turned out ok, I think.

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Altered Art: What do you see in the mirror?

Posted on 12th March 2018 by Neil

I had the privilege of hosting three of the church’s young people’s group (in other words ‘yoof’) last night in The Studio. We had two hours to work on a project, so I rummaged in my ‘for altering’ drawer and lifted out some Ikea Malma mirrors that were collecting dust. I also dusted off a technique I learnt years ago and came up with an altered art project.

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Bible Journaling: three more examples

Posted on 4th March 2018 by Neil

So February turned out to be a bit quiet on the daily bible journaling. I managed three days. Well, it was a short month. Here are two…

The above were drawn freehand, with a couple of stencil flourishes. I’ve started pencilling outlines first after finding this, though taking a little longer, gave better outcomes. I still enjoy designing with more fonts than I can draw, so for my next verse, Psalm 8:1, I created a digital version first and traced it onto my Bible margin for colouring.As a quick experiment, I’ve saved the digital image as a PDF and you can download it below if you’d like to add it to your own Bible. If there’s interest, I’ll be sure to pop up some more printables in the future (that’s the experiment bit).

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Bible Journaling: a few more examples

Posted on 15th February 2018 by Neil

I’m still on a mission to journal in my Bible(s) at least once a day. And I’m still missing my own goalposts 50% of the time… Here are a few more examples from the times I did manage to sit down do some bible journaling. I’ve tried a few more ways of putting down backgrounds, experimenting with text styles and even allowing stamps and a bit of illustration to creep in.