Painted Bible Cover

Painted Bible Covers

A few years ago, I received a Journaling Bible. If you’ve never heard of these, they’re Bibles that are specially designed for folks who either love to take notes {not me!} or who enjoy creating artwork based on Bible verses and sermons {definitely me!}. Some, like this one, have extra wide margins on each page, while others have full blank pages after every page of text. When I first got it, I liked the cover design well enough.

Then, it met with a little bit of a disaster in the form of a visiting three-year-old I love very much who found a Sharpie marker and decided to add some artwork of his own. In an effort to somehow fix the cover, I tried adding color to the design with some other markers. I failed. Eventually, I just gave up on trying to restore it…that is, until this week when I was inspired by some beyond-gorgeous painted Bibles I saw on Instagram. Check out the Hosanna Revival website, and you’ll see what I mean. They had beautiful flowers paired with hand lettering, and I knew right then that I at least had to try to create my own version to repair my poor sad-looking Bible.

I grabbed some supplies I had in my craft room and prepared to get started. You can do this with any cloth covered hardback book, and all you need besides the book itself is:

Fabric Creations Paint – your choice of colors
Fabric Creations Brushes – these are a variety of sizes and shapes, so you’ll have everything you need
Paint Marker {optional}
Pencil & Eraser

The specific colors I ended up using in my design were Aqua, Carnation, Grapefruit, White, Shamrock, and Metallic Pure Gold.

Step 1: Give the entire cover a base coat in your choice of colors.

I used Aqua for mine. You’ll want to open the book and lay it as flat as possible with the cover facing you while you paint. I recommend that you prop the cover up to keep the paint from getting on any of the pages. To do this, you can place a clean, unused bottle of paint in between the cover and the first page on each side. If your book is originally a light, solid color, one coat of paint may be enough. Since mine was dark, patterned, and had marker all over it, I did two coats to get better coverage. Let the paint dry completely in between coats and before moving on to the next step.

Step 2: Paint large circles around the edges of your front cover.

These will become your large flowers. I used Carnation for this and painted the circles with the second largest brush in the set. Don’t worry about having perfectly round circles or perfectly smooth edges. Real flowers aren’t either. I positioned my circles somewhat randomly around the border and made sure to place some closer to the edges than others. Some of the circles are incomplete, giving the illusion that the flowers continue off the cover.

Step 2: Add your smaller flowers by creating more circles with a different color.

This time, I used Grapefruit and the third largest brush. Again, my placement of the circles was random. Some overlapped or touched the larger circles, while others didn’t. There’s really no wrong way to do this part.

Step 3: Add basic leaf shapes around and between your circles.

My leaves were made with the same brush I used for the small circles and Shamrock paint mixed with White. Leaves are basically ovals with points on the ends. You can make them as long, short, wide, or thin as you like. In nature, leaves have lots of variety, so yours can too!

Step 4: Add detail to your leaves and flowers.

I started with my leaves. First, I used the liner brush {the smallest one} to outline each leaf with Shamrock paint and create a line in the center. Then, I painted white highlights on one side of each leaf.

For the small flowers, I used the liner brush to create 5-6 short curving white lines that suggest petals. To do this, draw two lines that look like parentheses in the center of the flower, then add three lines around the outside of them.

For the large flowers, I painted white centers, then used Grapefruit paint and the liner brush to create curved petal lines.

Step 5: Create tiny flowers using the liner brush.

These little flowers have five petals each, made by placing the brush down five times in a star shape. Then, I placed a tiny gold dot in the center of each one.

Step 6: Add gold vines.

If you prefer a non-metallic look, you can always use brown or a different shade of green. These are simply a curving line with a series of tiny leaves on each side. Think of painting a “v” shape on the line as you go.

Step 7: Add your hand lettered phrase.

I chose, “It is well with my soul.” You can choose any saying, verse, song lyric, or whatever else has meaning for you. You can also simply write, “Holy Bible,” or the title of whatever book you’re painting. I suggest lightly penciling in your words first to make sure you have the spacing right. Then, trace over them with a paint pen or using the Fabric Creations paints and liner brush.

I couldn’t be more pleased with how this turned out. I wish photos could capture the way the gold shines in the light! For Easter, I asked for the Interleaved Journaling Bible, so I’m going to have a new one to paint on soon. I’m already thinking about what colors and design I want to try next time. What do you think?

Are there some fabric covered books in your house that would love to be painted like this? Yard sales and thrift shops are great places to pick them up and you can have a bookshelf full of gorgeous statement art! Grab yourself some Fabric Creations paint and let your imagination run wild. Be sure to show us what you create in the Amy Latta & Friends Facebook group!

Hand Painted Bible Cover

 

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4 Comments

  1. I absolutely love your painted Bible cover. I actually used the same technique in my Bible journaling challenge today and shared it with all my beginner Bible journalers. I did learn I need some new brushes in the process of painting my page. Thanks so much for the easy tutorial. I have tagged you and shared a link to your blog post where I shared my page.

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