PitterAndGlink: My Favorite Bible Journaling Supplies

This post contains affiliate links. Thanks for supporting Pitter & Glink! Hey, y'all! Today's post has been a long time coming. For a while now, I've wanted to write a post about my favorite Bible journaling supplies, but I never took the time to do it...until this week. So today I'm going to tell you all about the supplies I love to use when I'm being creative in my Bible. Of course, these supplies will work for art journaling of any kind, but y'all know I love my Bible journaling, so I'll try to mention how they work on the pages of my journaling Bible.

I do want to mention first and foremost that you do NOT have to have a lot of fancy supplies to start journaling in your Bible. All you need is a journaling Bible (or a notebook) and a no-bleed pen. You can start there and add supplies to your collection as you become more comfortable working in your Bible. But if you've followed me for a while, you know I'm a craft supply hoarder, so I need ALL. THE. SUPPLIES. Well, I don't need them, but I want them. *wink* So today I'm just going to tell you a little about the supplies I continuously go back to. I also need to mention before I get started that the links I'm using to the items I talk about are affiliate links. This just means that if you purchase something through one of my links, part of the purchase price will go towards helping support my blog at no extra cost to you. (Thank you!) Now that we have that out of the way, let's get started!

Pens

The best place to start when talking about my favorite supplies is with pens. No matter the type of art that I create in my Bible, I always need a good pen. If you're a Bible journaler though, you know that not all pens play well with the pages in your Bible. My hands-down favorite pens to use in my Bible are Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pens. These pens are permanent and waterproof when the ink is dry, meaning that you can draw something and then use watercolor over your drawing. They also don't bleed through the pages of my Bible. (If you were to color with the pens, they would bleed a little, but regular writing doesn't bleed.) Also, they come in a variety of thicknesses.

I'm a fan of the Faber-Castell Big Brush Pens too, but they bleed more than the regular pens, and I don't find myself using them all that often. Another favorite pen of mine is the Sharpie Pen. I don't believe these pens are waterproof, but they're less expensive than the Faber-Castell pens, so I use them over acrylic paint or when I've prepped my page. Last but not least is the Illustrated Faith Pen. Honestly, I haven't used these pens a lot because of how much I love the Faber-Castell pens, but the few times I have used them, I liked them. (I can't remember how bad the bleed-through or shadowing was though, sorry!)

Watercolor

Another favorite of mine is watercolor. Using watercolor in my Bible the first time was scary--I was WETTING THE PAGE--but I quickly found that I just ADORE the look of watercolor in my Bible, especially when I'm painting an image. (Check out #pitterandglinkjournals on Instagram to see all my pages!) When I first started using watercolor, I used a cheap set. Although the cheap colors dry chalky and it's sometimes hard to use pens on top of them, the cheap set let me know that I loved watercolor, and then I was ready to invest in a more expensive set. My "next-step-up" favorite is Pelikan watercolors. This set contains some really pretty shades, and the colors are vibrant. I don't prep my pages when watercoloring, and while this set doesn't bleed, if you use heavy color, you will see some major shadowing on the back of the page. I quickly found that even though my Pelikan set has 24 colors, I felt limited, so I took the plunge and purchased a more expensive set that is my favorite set of watercolors: Neocolor II Water-soluble Crayons. I have the set of 30. There's a good variety of colors, and there's no bleed through or even heavy shadowing. (If you saturate a page with color, there's shadowing, but not like with the Pelikan brand.) You can draw with these and then wet your drawing, but I don't use them that way. I use a wet brush to pull color from the ends of the crayons and use them like regular watercolors. Also, these are the least chalky of the three sets I've mentioned so far. Last, I do have a set of Pastel Dreams Prima Marketing Watercolor Confections. (I linked to the Tropicals set because I can't find the Pastel Dreams.) I do really like this set, but I would suggest you save your money and get the biggest set of Neocolor II's that you can.

Acrylic Paints

My next favorite way to add color to my Bible is with acrylic paints. I love to swipe these paints on my pages thinly with an old gift card or with a brush. I most often use these when I want to do a quick entry in my Bible. They're great because they don't bleed through at all, and once you use them, they kind of prep your page and prevent other media from bleeding through. Cheap Apple Barrel paints work fine, and if you don't want to order them online, they have them in the craft section at Walmart. My favorite acrylic paint is the Martha Stewart Satin Craft Paint. I prefer it because the paint is a bit thicker than the Apple Barrel paint, and the colors are all so dreamy! I also like the Master's Touch acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby, and the Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic Paint. The Liquitex paint is somewhat expensive though, so I would rather buy several colors of the Martha Stewart paint than one tube of the Liquitex, but that's just me.

Stamp Pads & Stamps

Next on my list of favorite supplies is StazOn Ink. I'll be honest with you: any inks I've tried in my Bible bleed, and some of them bleed TERRIBLY. Of all of them though, StazOn ink bleeds the least amount. If you use it on top of acrylic paint, you don't really have to worry about bleed-through much. If you use it on top of watercolor, you do have to worry about bleed through, but I have a trick for that. Because I don't prep my pages before watercoloring, if I decide to stamp over watercolor, I will apply some clear matte gel medium over where I plan to stamp to prevent bleed-through. If you prep your pages though, you shouldn't have to worry about bleed-through at all. As far as stamps go, I LOVE alphabet stamps. You can usually find tiny sets inexpensively near the check-out line at Michael's. I have an American Typewriter Font Stamp Set that I really like to use because the letters click together to easily make words without having to stamp the letters individually. (My set is uppercase and came from Tuesday Morning, but I linked to the lowercase one on Amazon because PRIME.) I also really like the Homespun Alphabet Clear Stamps from Illustrated Faith. Keep in mind that with clear stamps you need to purchase a Clear Acrylic Block to mount them to when stamping. And speaking of clear stamps, I adore all of Growing Meadows's stamps!!! She has so many fun Christian-themed stamp sets in her Etsy shop. I won a giveaway from her last year where she's been sending me her new releases for a YEAR! I'm going to be sad when my year is up. Oh, and I can't end this section without mentioning the stamp I use on every Bible journaling entry: my Heidi Swapp Date Stamp. Since I have this one that works fine, I haven't been able to justify buying the Illustrated Faith Date-It Stamp, but I like it a lot. On a side note, no matter if you stamp it or hand-write it, date your entries, people! It's great to see how God moves in your life over time!!!

Stickers

While I love hand-lettering, let's face it, you have to practice to be consistently good at it, and sometimes I just don't want the hassle of drawing the same word fifteen times to get it right. That's why I LOVE stickers! They're a quick way to add words to your entries, and it's fun to mix and match different kinds of stickers. You can even mix stickers with hand-lettering! The stickers I use most often are the Homespun Alphabet Stickers from Illustrated Faith. I love the Hey Sugar Sugar set because white goes with everything, but I also love the One in a Melon set too because, well, PINK. I'm also a fan of the Wordfetti Stickers and the Enamel Hearts (not pictured). (I've been dying to try the Puffy Crosses, but I haven't purchased any yet.) Another sticker set I love is the ChitChat Word Stickers by Tim Holtz. I feel like these stickers give you a lot of bang for your buck because LOTS of common words we use all the time can be found in the set, keeping you from using up your alphabet stickers. I also like Time Holtz's Tiny Alphabet Stickers because the set comes with 900 letters!

Punches & Paper

Another one of my favorite and often-used supplies is my Tab Punch. You can take any kind of scrapbook paper (I love to buy paper packs when they're on sale) and a tab punch and make loads of tabs to top off your Bible journaling pages. I adhere the tabs to my Bible with a glue stick or an adhesive roller.

Washi Tape

Of course, I couldn't have a list of my favorite journaling supplies without including washi tape! I have wayyyy too much, but washi tape is perfect for adding pattern to a page. Add strips of washi to create a fun patterned background on a page, or add a piece to attach a tab to the top of your page. I have bought washi tape from many different craft stores when it was on sale, and I have have a few rolls from Illustrated Faith.

Whew! That was a lot, y'all! I hope that you don't feel overwhelmed after reading through this. Remember that you don't need all of these to get started. Just pick and choose what you'd like to try out, and add to your collection whenever you feel like trying something new. If you have any questions about the supplies mentioned in this post or about Bible journaling in general, let me know in the comments below, send me an email, or ask me on social media. I'll do my best to answer them. Happy crafting!