Bible Journaling - Decorating the side pages of the Bible, while contemplating relationship

I am taking my first tentative steps into Bible journaling. I bought myself the Inspire Praise Bible, which has lovely decorated pages on the side of the Bible, but I wanted to personalize these a little. I show you how to go about this in a step by step blog today. But this is more than a journaling blog. My purpose with reading the Bible is to grow ever more intimate in my relationship with our Father. For this reason, I chose to stencil the word relationship on my Bible. I also wrote a short poem about having a relationship with God as I contemplated all of this. I share the poem in this blog as well. The Afrikaans readers will be happy to learn that the poem was written in Afrikaans.

Verhouding bou

Ek wonder wat sou God verwag,

wat staan my te doen vandag,
ek wonder wat sou Jesus sê,
of wat sou Hy van my wou hê.

Ek wonder en ek vra die vrae,
terwyl ek my soos ek gedra,
nie moeite doen om uit te vind,
tevrede, want ek is ‘God se kind.’

“Ek dink nie God sou dit of dat...”
laat ek my denke oor mense spat,
terwyl Hy reeds geantwoord het,
as ek net fyner sou oplet.

Dus, pak ek my gedagtes weg
en hoor by Hom wat’s reg of sleg,
want Hy het Sy Woord by ons gelaat,
sodat ons Hom steeds kan hoor praat.

Die Gees beitel my denke vir my oop
en help my om my van myself te stroop,
sodat ek God se stem kan hoor
in die Bybel, en in my oor.

'n Oorspronklike gedig deur Marietjie Uys (Miekie)

Clamp your Bible between two sturdy pieces of wood. I did not have any wood at hand and simply used two smaller cutting boards for the purpose.

I purposefully bought this stencil, because it had the word relationship in the correct size.

I used Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Pine Needles with a sponge to partially stencil the word on a piece of paper. It worked a charm. I then wanted to find out if it would show against the purple background of the pages. I coloured a purple spot with a Sharpie marker and stenciled this spot as well. It was a much darker shade than the pages of the Bible, but still legible. This meant it would work.

I positioned the stencil on the side of the Bible, curving it to the shape of the pages. Then I stenciled the word onto the pages.

The result.

I then found some floral stamps that I wanted to scatter around the word.

There is not enough space to mount the stamp on a block, so I used it as is.

My finger had to work as stamp block. This will work fine as long as you keep the stamps to a small size.

What the stamping looked like in a close-up shot.

The stamped front.

Dragonflies have a special meaning for me, which I have blogged about in my art journal blogs on A Pretty Talent. I used these on the top and bottom pages.

The remaining side received much the same treatment.

I opted to use my Staedtler Triplus Fineliners to add just a hint of colour to the stamps. I started with slight shading on the word.

Then I added a little colour to the flowers.

The dragonflies were highlighted.

The completed bottom.

The completed top.

The completed side of the Bible.

You can watch a short compilation video of the above steps on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/A_0An_xbDyQ

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2005,2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois, 60188. All rights reserved.

Inspire PRAISE South Africa edition copyright 2017 by Christian Art Publishers, PO Box 1599, Vereeniging, 1930, RSA. All rights reserved.

Marietjie Uys (Miekie) is a published author. You can buy my books here:
You can purchase Designs By Miekie 1 here.
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