Bible Journaling Spotlight: Adult Coloring {3 Ways}

Before I started Bible journaling, I-like so many others- first fell in love with adult coloring books. I found myself particularly drawn to those with a Christian theme, finding that much like journaling became, it was a great creative worship outlet. This love of adult coloring books carried with me once I made the switch into Bible journaling...in many ways! For today's Bible journaling spotlight, I am sharing three ways to incorporate coloring and/or coloring pages into your journaling.

Trace The Images.

Before beginning journaling, I was absolutely terrified to get started. I've said on many occasions that I am not an artist so the idea of drawing in my Bible? Scary! Throughout the years, I've grown my collection to include die cuts and stickers, etc that allow me to create beautiful pages with no drawing required, but when I was just getting started, I had a few pens, colored pencils and maybe a handful of washi tapes! So, what did I do? I scoured my expansive collection of coloring books in search of images that could be used in my journaling. Generally speaking, Bible pages are quite thin, which makes tracing quite easy. You can then color, paint or otherwise customize to your liking. Don't have coloring books on hand? You can find a wide variety of free printable coloring pages online as well!

These are just a few early journaling pages using this technique:

Cut and Paste.

Sometimes tracing in your Bible just won't work. Perhaps you've already journaled on the opposite page, or maybe you just wanted to do a bolder painted background. In this case, treat your coloring pages as a fussy cut, cutting the image you hope to use out and pasting it into your journaling pages. I must admit this one can be much more time consuming and difficult depending on the images you choose... but can result in some really fun pages.

The page below is a great example of this. I knew I wanted to include an image of a knight for my page, BUT came across the obstacle mentioned above--- the opposite page had already been journaling so I could not see through to trace. Instead I found a free printable online to print, cut and paste. For this particular page, I opted to keep the image black and white to pop against a bright background, but you could color, add too or whatever you prefer to create your own pages.

Use a Coloring Bible.

While this wasn't an option for me when I first started journaling (as they didn't exist quite yet!), these days there are MANY journaling Bible options that have coloring pages already in the Bible. Some examples include: My Creative Bible, Inspired Bible, Beautiful Word Coloring Bible, etc. They come in a variety of styles and translations to best suit your preferences. Personally, I prefer the Beautiful Word Coloring Bible, as I've found those images are more my style. These Bibles all have blank margins in addition to those pages with predrawn images giving you the best of both worlds!