Illustrated Faith | Martha Bonneau

Happy Tuesday! Sorry I am running late with this post,  I ran into a couple technical issues!! Today I have an amazing guest to share with you! Martha is someone who I have admired outside this journaling bible community. Her eye for graphic detail draws me RIGHT in! So when she got involved with this I was just over the moon!! 

Follow Martha on IG

(p.s. isn't she the cutest!?!) 

When Shanna asked me to share my journaling Bible pages and a little bit about my process my immediate reaction was “of course, count me in!”.  As soon as I hit send on my email, the doubt started to sink in.  Until a year and a half ago, I could count on 1 hand how many times I had entered a church.  Religion was not a part of my life growing up.  I am extremely private (despite my tendency to over-gram on IG!) and it is not a part of my life that I have openly shared with others until I started my journaling Bible.  Would what I had to share have validity in the eyes of those who were so much more seasoned in their journey with God?  Would I use the right terminology, phrasing etc.?  I then remembered that my journey with my journaling Bible started with casting off fear so here I am, sharing a glimpse of my newfound relationship with His word through my journaling Bible.

I first sought out a church almost 2 years ago about a year after adopting our daughter from China.  She was the reason I wanted to find a church to attend.  I know that there will come a time in her life when she questions why she had to lose her birth family, her culture, the country that she was born in and so much more to become our daughter.  You hope and pray that your love as a parent will be enough, but I wanted to lay an additional foundation of love and support for her.  She not only needs to know how much we love her, but how much God loves her so I enlisted the help of a friend to help us find a church. A friend who lives out of state who I met through scrapbooking several years ago.  A friend who gifted me with a Bible several years ago that had sat on a shelf untouched. A friend who knew me well enough to know what my comfort level was and found the perfect church for us.  Almost 2 years later what started as an effort to support my daughter has in turn been of great comfort and support to me as well.  That surprised me as I am fiercely independent to a fault.  “I’ve got this” “I can do it myself” “Don’t worry, I can handle this” were my mantras, but as a first time parent to a child from a hard place who had lost everything I started to realize that maybe support wasn’t such a bad thing. To quote Gru from Despicable Me “light bulb!”  During all of this, my Bible that my friend had given me had moved from the shelf to my nightstand and then to the drawer of my nightstand where once again it sat untouched.  And then I discovered Shanna’s journaling bible on Instagram and once again “light bulb!”  The disconnect fell away instantly!  I express myself best through visual means, I am not a talker…at…all, but give me stickers and pens, and pretty paper and I am in my comfort zone.  There was no hesitation, I dove in immediately and found an immediate connection to the process and more importantly, His word.  

The first few pages I completed focused on letting go of fear and trusting Him.  The first page was for me, to help me trust in the process and let go and realize that “He’s got this” as opposed to “I’ve got this”.  My favorite page so far has been the one I completed to commemorate how far we have come with our daughter.  I never documented any of the hard stuff we went through during the first few months as a family so by journaling in the margins of John 4:18 “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts our fear.” and John 4:19 “We love because He first loved us.”  I was able to celebrate that we had come through on the other side solidly intact as a family by the grace of God. 

As a paper crafter for several years, I already had most of the supplies on hand to get started, the only investments I made were a journaling Bible with margins to work in and a couple of Frixion erasable pens.  My go to supplies are die cuts, letter stickers, rub-ons and stamps,  along with my favorite tools which are my small scissors and Tiny Attacher.  I keep everything in a small basket on my scrap table along with my notebook I take to church with my sermon notes.  I now actually take notes and feel so much more connected to each week’s message!

I cannot thank Shanna enough for sharing her process and her heart with us.  She is so supportive and generous with her time and resources and is fostering such a wonderful community through the FB group.

Thank you so much Martha for sharing your heart in a way that so many of us can relate! You are such an inspiration and I can't wait to see what you are up to next! Martha was sweet enough to provide this drop dead GORGEOUS printable for all of you today!!!

See, I told you she was amazing!!!

 You can check out more of her designs at her store, Panda Eight. 

Thank you so much Martha!

For those of you new to the journaling bible idea I want you to know that I am working on a FAQ, getting started post but wanted to point you in a couple directions to start, first off a lot of us are using the ESV journaling bible, and have recently fallen in love with Writing in the Margins (which puts into words exactly how I feel!), and we would LOVE to have you join us in our facebook group!!

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I have and show Martha support for sharing her heart today, it's not easy but so important! Have an amazing day!

go.be.inspired.

Shanna

Journaling Bible | Put it in the cup

For those that have been following me for a couple months you know this year started off rough. I took some time away from my online commitments and really took the time to focus on family. During that time, I am not going to lie I struggled with God. My mother in law suggested (ever so slightly) that I listen to a sermon from Doug Fields at Saddleback church. The name of the sermon was "have I got a surprise for you"  and I LOVED it. I think sometimes it is difficult for church leaders to share where they struggle and they do in fact struggle with the exact same things we stuggle with. Doug did just that, in such a HUMAN way. I love that. The sermon was great, and I highly suggest listening to it yourself but my favorite part was when he talked about "putting it in the cup". He talks about how we pray to God, and then we worry. When we really need to hand it all over to God and trust him with our desperate prayers. Of course worrying is natural human process... but allowing God to work in your life  is a learning process (and sometimes harder than others). It was certainly something I PERSONALLY needed (need) to work on in this season of my life.

I wanted to share my start to finish process for this week in my journaling bible.

Lindsay Letters designs some of the cutest stamps for Studio Calico so I pulled those out as I love how they look when stamped in my bible. I also saw this adorable cup sticker that was perfect for the sentiment "put it in the cup".

I LOVE the BE BRAVE stamp and used my staz-on ink (my fave) right under the cup and then journaling "put it in the" with my favorite journaling pen.  I love making sure I add a mixture of my own personal handwriting along side stamps and alpha stickers!  

I have been sort of hoarding these adorable stickers from the Hola kit (sold out, but keep your eye out some cute alpha sticker in the upcoming kits!). Something I kind of think about when adding alpha stickers is how long the word is, and alternating styles (for example traditional or block letters). 

I love seeing how everyone is adding mist (I used Mister Huey's) to their pages and wanted to add a little unexpected color to my pages today. In this photo it is still drying but I wanted to show you all to NOT be afraid to get messy in your bibles! I just sprayed it on there and once it is dry and you close the book the page is still in perfect condition!

One of the last things I always do is add my tab. I try to think of a sentiment short and simple that will remind me what I will find inside. I used one of the tabs from Veronica's amazing (free) printables.  I also added a "2" from one of my favorite Studio Calico alphas from a past kit, but good news, if you missed out on those they are coming out with MORE and you can find them here. 

If you are new to the idea of using your bible in this way, or would like to find a community to find some amazing inspiration and some of the sweetest gals you will ever meet, please come join us on facebook in our new journaling bible group.  I have also taught a class through influence network called journaling bible: the basics. You can purchase the recording and get more info here. Hope to see you there!

go.be.inspired.

Shanna 

The One With the ROOM TOUR and other fun goodies!!!

Thank you so much for stopping by today! I am so excited to let you in my home, and share a little about the space that I create in!

First I wanted to share a bit about US! I don't think I have talked about it much on this blog, but we are a multigenerational family! Jonathan and I always told our parents we would take care of them as they grew older (still many many many years to come) but they wouldn't ever have to worry about that. It was something that was laid on our hearts from a very young age. When we told them that, we thought it would be when we were all much older, but in fact it worked out perfectly for it to happen sooner rather than later. Now we get to reap the benefits of a multigenerational family as we have young kids, and we have an extra set of hands (or two) to help us through these busy times. We made it official in March 2013, and I can't believe what a great transition it has been. Sure there has been some adjustments, like asking Papa to refrain from giving Addison donuts whenever she flashed her eyelashes at him and other fun things like that but over all I feel so blessed!

When we moved our main focus were the main living areas as well as the bedrooms so the craft room really never got done, we just threw everything in there and made due. It was a mix & match of Katherine (my mother in law) and our furniture.  So when I knew she would be out of town for a couple days in a row, and I had saved up some money I knew it was a perfect chance to re-do the scrap room as a surprise for her.

It was important for me that it be a perfect mixture of our styles so when I was "sneaking" items home and telling her they were for our master bedroom and she kept saying she "LOVED" them and wanted them in the main living area I knew I was on the right track!!

So when she went to San Diego with her girlfriends we went to work!!! We all love how it turned out!

The view when you walk in! Baskets from Target's Feed Collection - Table from Cost Plus Aiden Furniture Collection - Map Land Of Nod (Awesome collection, JUST kidding!) - 

Ampersand Light from JunkArtGypsyz <---- enter to win yours here

For the center of the room I used an Ikea Kitchen Island 

We lined this 10 foot wall with Ikea Kitchen Cabinets, white counter top and two book shelves. The Arrow Shelf and the Number 6 art is from Home Goods, which we just got in town! The rest of the items I curated from our old room. I love how both of our styles came together. 

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I also picked up this "fish bowl" from Home Goods, and I LOVE having all our washi out to see! :)

When we were designing the room I wanted to make sure the raskog cart has a home.

 

I love this thing and keep some of my favorite things in here!

I wanted to make sure we had a nice open space to create, also a little die-cut station!

These were all storage solutions we had in the old room and easily made their way over! 

This arrow shelf has to be one of my favorite pieces in the room, and at $29.99 it was a steal!

I also had these in the old room and just cut them down to fit the smaller size.  I love having them out and ready to use!

One of my favorite cabinets is this pull out pantry from Ikea. It was a PAIN to put together, but I love it!

Thank you so much for joining me on my little tour!! Look what I found on my desk!  Some lovely Skipping 5 goodies! Please see my instagram for your chance to win your own set!

xox