Happy day-before-the-day-before Christmas!! Today is also my sister’s birthday. She’s turning sixteen, and I’ve been working on her present for almost two years now. Join me as I finish painting and setting up a journaling Bible that I’ve been customizing just for her. Follow along with me to gain some tips on how to paint a journaling Bible for yourself or someone you love. Enjoy!
I decided to go with a theme of rest for this cover design. This is actually the third time I’ve painted this Bible, but I’ve finally made up my mind! I’m also sketching out some adorable sleeping animals, including a dragon, owl, fox, rabbit, frog, chameleon, and a giant snake. Not the most conventional animals, but she loves everything scaly so these will be perfect!
Next, I traced over the pencil lines with my Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen. I tried to erase after and ended up smearing the pen lines, so if you try this technique, keep that in mind. You can’t erase pencil lines! I also wrote out the verse Matthew 11:28 (her current favorite) on the back cover and the classic “naps naps naps naps naps” on the other, in the middle of all the animal friends.
Want to learn where and how you can start Bible journaling? Check out this post!
The final step of this process is to fill in the animal sketches with paint! I used some paint pens we’ve had around the house for years. They weren’t the most consistent medium to use; I had to work with several big blobs of paint, nut if that happens, just dip the tip of the pen in the pool of paint and try to spread it to the rest of the image.
And that’s all for the outside! I might go back and fix a couple things once the paint is dried, but since today is her birthday… I don’t have that much time left 😅😹
The inside of the journaling Bible
On the inside, I’ve done a few relatively minimalist Bible journaling entries using this set from Illustrated Faith in hopes of inspiring her to read and study the Bible in the coming years. She has already tried Bible journaling for herself and decided it’s not for her, but I think she’ll still enjoy looking at the pretty pictures inside this one.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post and learned something about how to paint a journaling Bible. If you enjoyed it, please do me a solid and share with all your peeps using the graphic below. And let me know: what would your perfect Bible look like?
Merry Christmas!!
