I have been painting in my Bible since I first got a journaling Bible in 2015 or so, and this year I finished touching every page with some sort of something. That could be lettering, paint, stamping or the occasional sticker. See below for a short flip through of that bible. Sound on for the delicious crinkle sound of the pages, the breeze and the wind chimes. It’s very soothing.

After bringing this bible with my to different small groups, bible studies, and just church in general, the occasional set of eyes have wandered over to my page, and I receive many comments on it. Lately, it’s been the beastly size, because after painting so many pages, it did grow significantly in size. When you paint on a paper that isn’t meant for paint, it will buckle (get wavy). This is one reason you get the beautiful crinkle sound, but it also means that the pages will no longer lay nice and flat against each other. I didn’t have many additional pages or post-its added, and it still grew over double in size! This brought even more people asking about it. I had so many comments about how people could “never do that” or “I can’t even draw a stick person” or, “my writing looks like chicken scratch. As an artist, I hear those kind of comments often, and it always saddens me. People need to see that they have been given more creativity that they think! But for the sake of this post, I won’t totally go there now. I just want to chat about a tool I am offering to help bring out your creativity!

Enter the Bible Lettering Templates.

I have created templates from the lettering and illustration straight from my own Bible. These templates are quick and easy digital downloads you can print out, and use in various ways to help you get into your Bible more. Use them as tracing templates, like in the above video, to add some pretty lettering to your pages. Cut them out and tape them into your bible. If you don’t have a journaling bible (grab a beautiful one here if you want!) you can also use them in your regular Bible. I recommend using a lighter coloured pencil crayon (coloured pencil for you Non-Ontarians) so you can still see the printed scripture through your writing. You can also use these templates in your journal, outside of a Bible. Writing scripture is a great way to help you lock it into memory, and get in the Word in general!

But what pen should I use?

I love using a Tombow Fudenosuke hard tip brush marker in my Bible for lettering. It allows me to use different pressure on the pen to give different thicknesses of the lines that I’m writing. For that calligraphy look (called brush calligraphy), you want to use a thicker line for every time you do a downstroke, and release pressure to do a thinner line on the upstrokes. The templates show these two thicknesses, so if you don’t have a brush pen, you can do faux calligraphy and just go back with you pen or pencil and thicken up your down strokes. My other favourite tools are just a regular pencil, pencil crayons, papermate flair markers, mildliner highlighters, and uniball signo micro 207 gel pens.

Will that pen bleed through the page?

If you are nervous about your pen bleeding through you page, know that if you have a journaling Bible, your pages will already be a little thicker than a regular paper of a Bible, but I also have a bonus tip. Use one of the very back pages of your Bible as a pen and marker tester page. You might find that the paper is still thin, and you’ll see some ghosting of the pen through, but once you add writing on the other side, you’ll see it still shows up fine without too much bleed through from the backside. For tracing, I’d encourage you using pencil to start, so the ghosting of a pen doesn’t mix you up to much if you’re double sided on that particular page.

Ok, where are these templates?

If you feel ready to try lettering in your Bible now, head over to the template shop to pick out your downloads. Coming soon is themed bundles by topic! It’s been a joy to make these for you, and to go back through the pages of my Bible and recreate the lettering to be able to share! I hope you get into the Word more and more with these.

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