Embrace Bible Journaling Mistakes

It is perfectly normal to make mistakes in life and with Bible journaling. Learn to embrace Bible journaling mistakes and find the beauty in them.

I make mistakes? You must be thinking that is not even possible. Haha! That has to be the biggest joke of the year. I make mistakes and screw up A LOT. Now that we have that out in the open air, we can all realize that NO one and I mean NO ONE is perfect no matter how hard we try.

Being a perfectionist is one major way to keep you from really achieving things because you are too afraid of what might happen. I almost let being a perfectionist and a bit OCD at times keep me from Bible journaling. I am so glad I didn’t. It has turned out to be one of the most rewarding hobbies and experiences of my life.

I have come to realize that making mistakes is part of the beauty of this world and Bible journaling at the same as when things seem to just be lining up and going exactly the way we want them too. We can’t forget that this is how we learn our greatest lessons in life.

Embrace Your Mistakes

Before we go much further chances are that if you are reading this then you have an idea of what Bible journaling is. If you are just getting started, be sure to check out this huge round-up of supplies.

I have made plenty of mistakes in my journaling Bible and can’t wait to share them with you to show you that you are not alone. You will not be able to prevent all the mistakes no matter how hard you try. You mine as well go ahead and realize it now so you aren’t devastated when you think your pages are ruined.

Mistake #1: My first mistake came on my very first entry. I thought it would take me a little longer to make a mistake but nope. I blew it right away. I wanted to try watercolors so bad and just dove right in. I knew to not weight my paintbrush down in water, but apparently not enough. This first page is depicting creation.

I used yellow watercolor paint first for the top of the page for the day. Little did I know too much water caused the paint and water to bleed through the page. I couldn’t believe how much the yellow actually showed through. What I realized is that this will only make the back side of this entry even better when I go to illustrate that side.

Mistake #2: The pages after a lot of my entries would seem to crinkle which at first I couldn’t believe because now my Bible wouldn’t close completely flat. I didn’t want to buy a page prep at the time.

Now I have found that the pages being crinkled actually helps to make that entry stand out in my Bible. I can now flip to that particular illustration in no time.

You can see above how this page doesn’t lay completely flat when opened. The page wants to stand up some.

Mistake #3: No matter how many times I try out a stamp to make sure it is completely covered in ink before stamping it on the page, I still seem to mess up the stamps every once in a while. Do you know how hard it is to get the stamp re-stamped in the exact same position? Extremely hard!

From now on instead of getting annoyed, I simply embrace Bible journaling mistakes. I have found that using pens of the same color to fill in the missing spots helps to hide it pretty good.

When I am using the date stamp, I actually keep stamping it on the page until there is no more ink left to show on the page. You start to find that all the little things that you thought were mistakes and ugly actually start looking pretty neat.

The mistakes are actually ways for us to remember that none of us are perfect and don’t have to be. Jesus Christ is perfect for us and took that burden. Focus more on your deepening study of the Word instead of how pretty you think the pages “have to” look like.

Remember, embrace your mistakes and learn from them. Allow yourself to “mess-up” your pages sometimes while finding the beauty in them at the same time.

Let me know what mistakes you have made in your Bible before and what you learned from it. I would love to hear. There is power in knowing you are not alone in this.