To Know Him Is To Love Him...and JOY JOY JOY

Hi there!

My name is Tifany and you can generally find me blogging over at Ink Blots by TRD. Back when I "officially" started my adventures in Bible art & journaling I knew I wanted to keep things simple. In general, that's just how I roll.

Using things like pens and colored pencils come naturally to me - I've been drawing and coloring for as long as I can remember. As someone who has also been papercrafting and stamping for a long time, it just feels right to incorporate some stamps and basic papercrafting supplies as well. I don't intend for the "craft" to take over the focus on what I am reading/creating/journaling about, so I want to keep working with methods and media that feel natural to me. 

Most often for my Bible art & journaling I start with something I have read or heard (in a sermon) and a picture or idea just comes to mind. But other times, I hear a song or think of an idea and want to incorporate it into my Bible. For one of my recent entries, I was looking at the Seek Him stamp set from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps and the phrase "to know Him is to love Him" just popped out at me. (No, there is no "is" in the set, but the rest of the words are there. The "is" that I used is from The Lord Is Risen.)

1 John 2:3&5 just seemed like the place to put this. It says (NIV):

3 We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands.

5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them.

When I was younger, my obedience to God was generally based in fear, but as I have come to know more about Him I have seen how good and loving He is - and I love that. The stamps here said what I wanted to say, and I didn't want to add a bunch of fuss - just a hint of color with the hearts.

Another of my recent Bible entries came from a thought that came to mind - a song, actually. 

"I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart." 

(Where?)

I wanted to create something in the margins that felt joyful, so I picked two colors (for the dots) that bring me joy and just went to stamping "joy" all over. (The dots are actually created by using the back side of the "o" stamp from the Cold Coffee Alphabet.) The "joy" words are from a stamp set (coming soon!) called Choose Faith and I added a few dots and other accents with a white Sharpie paint pen.

Philippians 4:4 (NIV) says:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!

Repeat stamping is soothing for me and it was fun to just sing a joyful song as I was stamping away.

May you have a joyful day today!

You can find a list of all the supplies I used and more of my Bible journaling posts over on my blog.