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:

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

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:

Continue reading

Art Journal Page: Light & Shade

As I’ve previously mentioned, the August art journal session at The Studio is all about ‘tints, tones and shades’. Playing with light and shade on a page helps give depth and interest to the piece. Here, playing with the properties of distress ink and distress oxide provides the opportunity to get every shade of the same colour. The use of water also helps with the lighter tones.

Light & Shade art journal page Continue reading

Bible Journaling: The Bishop’s School of Prayer Pair

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:

Bible Journaling: Keep on Knocking

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.

bible journaling keep on knocking Continue reading

Bible Journaling: three more examples

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).

Continue reading

Bible Journaling: a few more examples

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.

Continue reading

Bible Journaling: Developing a Style

I have been trying to get into the habit of illustrating a bible verse each day since the start of the New Year. On average I think I am hitting a 40-50% hit rate, which isn’t too bad with everything else that’s happening. Here are the results of some of those bible journaling episodes. I think a typography style is developing nicely, but I’m also very fond of the illustrated ‘Immanuel’ page spread.

Continue reading