I hope you are enjoying all your blessings this weekend!

I was happy to get some time on Thanksgiving morning to do some faith art journaling on Psalm 100 and I captured it on this video for you:

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Yay, I'm really excited to share with your that I'm going to be teaching at TruthScrap in January! I really hope you will be able to join us for this event!  TruthScrap is the ONLY online, live virtual art and crafting event focused on celebrating the intersection of faith and art. With inspiration brought right to your desktop, there’s no need to change out of your PJs because you’re logging on, right from home!

If you want to learn more about the HOW and WHY of infusing your creativity with your faith, Truth Scrap is the event for you. Learn new skills while getting a new take on old favorites! And with seven energizing, talented instructors, you’re sure to be inspired.

The class I'm teaching is on Faithbooking...which is a way to scrapbook your faith. I will be sharing ideas on how you can do that and why you should! I can’t wait for you to join us! Click here for more info!

So the other night I posted on social media that I finally joined in on the #IllustratedFaith #ScriptureDoodling bandwagon and there was quite a reaction.  Thank you everyone for your love!!! It was very encouraging!  Hopefully this blog post will answer all the questions that I've gotten. 

Truth be told, I had resisted this whole "art journaling in your Bible" movement at first since I already do a lot of Bible studying and I didn't want to take time away from that in order to "play". BUT, the seed was planted. Just about every time I cracked open my Bible I could see how I could incorporate this into my life by keeping it simple and recording what I was already learning.

Buying a new Bible

So first things first, I knew that for me, I needed another Bible to work in.  After much, much searching I finally narrowed it down to the Hardcover ESV Single column Journaling Bible...if you're a KJV or NIV reader there are Journaling Bibles and Notetaker's Bibles for you too. And of course they come with a variety of covers, I went with the black hardcover so I can do something "arty" to it in the future.

After my new Bible arrived it just sat on my desk. I didn't know where to start or what art journaling method to try first...especially since the pages are thin (not as thin as in my regular Bible, but still pretty thin). I was really, really worried that the bleeding through would bother me & considered using clear gesso on my pages first...the only draw back to that would be that the pages might crinkle and would be heavier then the non-illustrated pages, both of which might make me nuts.  Then I read Stephanie's hash tag she posted on one of her photos: #itdoesbleedbutsodidHE. So true! So with that I decided to just go for it! Like my other art journals I plan to just go with the flow, incorporating spilled paint, crinkled pages, and whatever else may happen into my new pages.  My regular artwork has plenty of "mistakes", why should this be any different?

Products used

For this first page I used the following supplies:

• Sakura Micron Pen: 05
• Faber Castell PITT Artists Pen: Warm Grey III #272
• Thickers
• pencil
• Charcoal pencil
• Adirondack Color Wash: Purple Twilight
• Perfect Pearls Mist: Turquoise
• Mini Mister

My process

I plan on using a lot of different techniques on my pages, but since I got soooooo many questions on my first page I thought I'd break down what I did.

• Prayed about where to start and started reading over my more recent notes until something jumped back out at me as something I'd want to record in this Bible.
• Next I read over the verses and noticed the word "heart" being used & marked those with a pink heart.
• I knew I wanted to mask off one of the words I would use so I broke out some Thickers that were loosing their stickiness (all of my Thickers fall into this category, they just won't stay sticky!) and figured out what word I'd use and where to place it. 
• I then did a sketch of my words in pencil onto the page.
• I considered using water colors, but decided on spray inks. I started with the Perfect Pearls Mist because it's a light color that really just adds some shimmer and light color to the page.  I used my heat gun to dry the page, and yes it did curl and crinkle some.
• Next I took my Mini Mister and added 4 drops of Adirondack Color Wash & filled the rest up with water.  Then I spritzed the lower half of the page with the diluted wash, blotted, and dried with my heat gun.
• I then went over my sketched words with my Micron pen.
• And lastly I added some shading to all of the letters with my PITT Pen and a bit of charcoal pencil on the masked off letters.

And to answer all of you who are dying to know if it bled through to the other side....yes it did, and I am ok with it!

Please let me know if you have any other questions!

Disclaimer: Affiliate links were used in this article. If you buy from these link it won't cost you a penny more, but I make a little bit of money (not enough for a pony).

Friends are special, and I'm super happy to have met a few of the ladies of Art To The 5th earlier this year and felt an instant connection. It felt like we've known each other for years! 

Well, as you could imagine I was super happy when they asked me to be a guest artist for one of The Documented Life prompts. {Check out my "spotlight" on their site HERE.} I love my documented life art journal (aka: my soul journal) and I'm blessed to be able to share more of it with you today...and yes, I do promise to post more of the completed pages I've done in it soon.  Things have been really crazy here with us moving TWICE so I appreciate your patience.  :)

Now for those of you who are new visitors to my blog here's a bit about me...

I'm married to my best friend...we've been together for about 23 years and married for almost 14 years. We currently have one dog, a very energetic puppy. Our older dog, our old faithful friend who was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago just past away last week...we all miss her incredibly!  

Oh, and I'm thankful to be able to work from home as and artist and blogger!

Ok, so moving right along, the prompt for the week is: cut up something from a magazine and add to your page. I love this prompt, it's been awhile since I've collaged magazine bits! 

Here's how my page turned out...

Often when I start an art journal page I have no idea where it's going to go and this was no exception.  I literally just picked up a magazine, flipped through it and ripped out some pics I liked and then went with my gut...I always figure that if I absolutely hate it I can paint over it and start fresh. Speaking of paint, the interesting thing for me with this prompt is that since I was focused on magazines I ended up never picking up my paint brush to paint...a rarity for me!

I started off this page by chopping up some random magazine advertisements and glued them to my page with Americana Decou-Page...oh wait, I forgot, I cut a funky scalloped border along one edge of my paper first and THEN I added the ad strips.

Next I added some other photos from magazines....

I took a baby wipe to the flower to distress it a bit...

And then added some charcoal to the flower and doodles to the rest of my page...

I really enjoyed mixing things up for me and stepping outside of my box (or is it my rut? LOL!).

Check out the previous art journaling prompts from Art To the 5th HERE.  And join the Facebook Group for The Documented Life Project if you haven't yet, it's so inspiring and chocked full of terrific people.

sponsor: DecoArts

If you've been following along with how I decided to do The Documented Life Project this year...I'm calling it my Soul Journal...you've seen that I intended to use the monthly calendar section as a blessings and gratitude journal.

Here's how January turned out...

And here's how February is going so far...

Now I know that a lot of you are trying to squeeze in art into your busy schedule, this is a great way to do that! It doesn't take long and it really sets the day off right when I sit down and focus on what touched my heart yesterday.  I tend to work on this at the begining of my morning quiet time before the day gets started.  There's just something about sipping on coffee and opening your heart up that focuses me on what's really important for the day.