Watercolours in my Journaling Bible - Part 2! by Deborah Gregg

I do love using watercolour paints in my NIV Journaling Bible (I have the lovely mint polka-dot one), so I thought I'd share another page with you all. For this one I used drips and deliberately ran colours together across the page to create a vibrant background for the words.
The passage is from 1 Samuel chapter 3, where one night, the young boy Samuel kept hearing God calling his name. I love this story, and was thinking about how God can speak to us in so many ways - but are we really available, paying attention and listening? I love how God constantly shows us something new from His Word, and even from very familiar passages, when we simply ask Him - 'Speak Lord, for your servant is listening' is something we can pray every time we pick up our Bibles!

To create this page I first prepped the page with a coat of clear gesso (see my previous post Part 1!). Once dry, I outlined the lettering very lightly with pencil. Pencil does usually show through watercolours, so I try to go very lightly....

Next I placed a piece of scrap paper behind the page, ready for the fun to begin! I used a fat brush and painted fairly wet watercolour paint splodges on the edge of the page margin, with the colours overlapping slightly. I used just the primary colours red, yellow and blue and where each colour met the next one you can see they blended to make the secondary colours of green and orange. I didn't scrub the colours onto the page, just added plenty of paint very gently.

Next I lifted the page up, and let the colours run down the page towards a rolled up piece of kitchen towel in the centre. If the colours were slow to run, I either added a little more coloured paint at the top, or spritzed with my water spritzer just to help them flow. It was tricky and I didn't quite have enough hands - yet still managed this photo with one hand....

And this is where I dropped the edge of the paper and it folded over onto itself - I'm not entirely sure how or why I managed to get a photo of this before I panicked ;-) but here you go: 

Thankfully no harm done, I very gently peeled the page back and it was mostly fine. Phew! The page is really delicate when wet, even with gesso prep, so I was quite relieved! There was a small rip in the bottom corner - more on that later....

Then I dabbed the excess paint with the kitchen paper, and dried the page with my heat tool. 

One of the best things about using watercolours in my Bible is that my Micron pens work really well over the top, with no risk of damaging the pen nibs. I simply outlined the lettering in a Pigma Micron 05 black pen. 

 I decided to leave the lettering quite simple for this page. You can see the rip in the bottom corner....which I decided to repair with washi tape!

Ages ago I bought a very cheap set of rainbow coloured washi tapes online (from Amazon cost less than £2 I think!). They have lasted for ages, and the narrow tapes have proved to be really useful for Bible Art Journaling - there's always a colour to match what I need!
So I used a small section of washi tape to repair the corner, and trimmed the corner into a curve with a sharp pair of scissors.

 Lastly I wanted to create a page tab for the top of the page. I liked the look of a watercolour smudge on my scrap paper that was under the page earlier on. So I added my key word, ripped it out, and stuck it to the top of the page so that the word 'Listen' was sticking up as a tab. That will help me easily find the page when I next need to look for it.

So the finished page to me contains a colourful, visual reminder to me, that God is wanting to call us, and speak to us, and he will keep on calling until we get the message and respond - here I am Lord, I'm ready, I'm listening....
I wonder what God may be trying to say to you today? Why not ask Him?