Bible Journaling: New Year 2021

A new year arrives and it seemed a fitting moment to do some Bible journaling. I have to admit that without a group to prepare for, my journaling has lapsed – since April! It was lovely to be designing again and I’ve been adding to my font and design collection. I’ve kept the same style to allow me to share the printable versions and as always, I think it’s the colour that makes the design pop. A printable template is available for free from my shop.

I’ve chosen verses that offer some encouragement as we start the new year. They are mainly on the theme of ‘new’ – I had to start my search somewhere. I also admit to choosing some on the basis of whether there were any competing completed Bible journaling illustrations on the same page.

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LIM DT: Doodles

Here’s another design team card for Less is More challenge blog. This time the theme is ‘doodles’ which is a pretty open-ended challenge allowing all sorts of artwork to be included. I’ve chosen to use a stencil for the main element of the card, doodling over the top with a Sakura Gelly Roll black pen.

Bible Journaling: five more illustrations

Sorry it has been so long since I last posted some Bible journaling. May was not a good month for inspiration, and I’ve also been working on a quilt that I will be teaching later in the year which needed finishing. More on the quilt to follow once I have written the pattern!

Back to Bible journaling… all today’s verses are from the letters end of the New Testament. I’m working through a list of verses that I have noted in Biblical order – you’ll be able to tell how close I am to the end of that list!

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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).

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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.

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Art Journal Page: Sew Faux Patchwork

On Monday evening, it’s the monthly art journal session at The Studio. The theme for the session is ‘faux patchwork’, and here’s my sample. Quilting meets paper craft and art journaling.
faux patchworkJust so you know, there is no fabric, padding or indeed cotton/thread on this page. Everything you see is flat and stuck onto the page.
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Bible Journaling: Psalm 72 vs.18-19

I’ve taken a break from spring cleaning the studio… how come when ‘tidying up’ things look even worse than when I started? I merely whisked a cobweb away with a damp cloth, inadvertently cleaned a section of paintwork, wiped a little harder, and it ended up with me repainting that section later that morning. I think I will get the feather duster out next time.

As I say, I’ve taken a break and used the opportunity to do more bible journaling in my NLT Refections bible. This time I’ve broken away from the main margin and added typography to the white space on the page proper. Not sure this one works too well with the colours I chose, or the grey background – but then that’s what practice and experimentation is for! I think the use of white space works better – and that’s probably more obvious when the passages have the short poetry style formatting. It’s not going to be as easy to use white space when there isn’t any… and that’s where the next artistic bravery step comes in – illustrating over the text itself.

Psalm 72: 18-19 bible journaling Continue reading

Art Journal: American Adventures [Travel Journal]

It’s taken some time, but I’ve finished the journal I handmade last year and finally got round to taking and editing the photos of the finished article. I intended to journal each day before going to bed, but got a little behind whilst in New York as our room was so small that there was actually nowhere to work on a flat surface, and there was no communal area I could use either. Consequently, by the time I got to Boston, and there was space to work, I was already five days behind. Then life on the road for the final few days also meant I was doing other things at the end of each day. So it meant finishing off the work once I got home, but that brought back good memories of a lovely, and much needed, holiday.

As a format, the piano hinge worked very well – I was able to slide out each of the sticks in turn to work on the pages individually, which was far easier. The fold out sections added a little more space, and the wallets somewhere to put the various bits of ephemera that I collected along the way. With techniques from collage to napkin decoupage, hand drawn typography to watercolour illustrations, it was fun to put together. I would have liked to do more urban drawing, but for speed, mini-photos had to suffice.

Sit back, with a cuppa of your choice, and holiday vicariously as you work through the journal 🙂

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