Victory through Jesus Christ our Lord

    I was listening to the daily devotion on the WELS site and today's devotion on 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 used the analogy of a deadly jellyfish sting. I remembered that I had a stamp of jellyfish and thought I could use it to illustrate those verses. I am using the NIV Beautiful Word Coloring Bible right now and many of the pages have lightly drawn images already there for you to just color. So when I went to the page for those verses, the illustration for verse 58 was already there. That's a good one to remember, too, so first I colored in those words. "Always give yourselves fully to the work the Lord because you know that your labor is not in vain." When I highlighted the verse in the passage, I noticed that the words "stand firm. Let nothing move you." were not illustrated. I thought of a brick wall and added those words to the top of the page and drew in a brick wall. Then I decided to illustrate the "Where, O death, is you victory..." passage that originally brought me to these pages on the left hand page. First I wrote out the words in blue ink, then I used a light lavender to add the jelly fish. The sting has been removed so I wanted to keep them faint. Lastly I sponged the blue ink to make it look ocean-y. I also stamped a couple more jelly fish right next to the verse in the text to tie it to the previous page.

Hope in Jesus is an Anchor to my Soul

This is my continuation of my journey into illustrating in a Bible instead of writing notes. Someone posted a picture online of their page with an anchor prominently drawn. (If I can find that inspirational post, I will credit the artist.) I still do not have the "courage" to draw over the printed words in my Journaling Bible, but thought of all the stamps I have related to anchors and tonight, I made this page.

While I was working on the page, a hymn kept going through my head, so I printed a copy of it and used wash tape as a hinge to add it to the page as a "tip in."








Then I highlighted the lyrics on the hymn that says, "In every high and stormy gale my anchor holds within the veil." And thought I should write that on the page, too. So this is the finished page on the right. I made a mistake when writing the word "gale" in the bottom right, so I covered it with post it tape and rewrote it. Then as I thought, "Now I am done." I noticed I had smeared the word on the post it tape, so I added more black ink to make it look intentional, and stormy.

Bible Journaling with art

For many months I have been reading online at numerous sites about using art in a journaling Bible. A journaling Bible is one that has 2 inch wide margins on each page to give room for note taking. I bought my Bible right away and added to my stash of pens, pencils, and markers, practiced writing in a decorative way in a notebook, and started "collecting" verses that I thought would be a place to start  because they brought images to mind.  I finally got the courage to put ink to paper. These verses were my comfort late at night when I was troubled (coming up on Jake's birthday...he has spent half his life in prison and has almost as long to go) and couldn't sleep. I found these words in Hebrews 13(v.5 and 8)and decided it was time to put ink to the page. I used stamps and sponged with distress inks. The handwriting and lettering is my own.