Simple Border Doodles for Bible Journaling Pages

A border is the kindest place to start with Bible journaling. It asks nothing of your drawing ability and it makes a page look considered.

Psalm 19:7 says the LORD's law is perfect, restoring the soul, and the LORD's covenant is sure, making wise the simple. Making wise the simple is a generous phrase to keep in view while you draw. Nothing on this page asks for skill you do not already have. Six of them follow. All six are built from marks you already know how to make.

Six Borders Anyone Can Draw

1. The running vine. One wavy line down the margin, then small leaves alternating left and right along it.

2. The dot and dash chain. A dash, a dot, a dash, repeating. Slow and even is the whole trick.

3. The simple arch. A row of shallow half circles, like scallops, along the outside edge.

4. The wheat stalk. One straight line with short strokes angled upward from it in pairs.

5. The corner trio. Three small leaves in one corner only, which is often all a page needs.

6. The double rule. Two parallel lines with a thin gap, one heavier than the other.

Where to Put Them

The outside margin is the safest place, since it is the widest and no text runs into it.

A border along one edge is usually enough. All four edges turns a page into a frame, and the words start looking like they are trapped inside it.

Leave a finger width of white space between the border and the text. Crowding is what makes a hand drawn page look busy, and space is what makes it look intentional.

Pens and Bleed

Bible paper is thin. Test any pen on the last page of the book before you take it to a passage you love.

Fine tip pens in the 0.3 to 0.5 range work well. Gel pens and anything with heavy ink will show through, and markers will find their way to the next page.

A pencil is a legitimate choice too. Faint graphite on thin paper never bleeds, it can be erased, and a border in soft pencil beside printed text looks quietly beautiful.

Practice Somewhere Else First

Draw each border ten times on scrap paper before it goes near a margin. Ten repetitions is enough to make the hand steady.

Keep those practice sheets. Borders you drew badly in March look surprisingly good beside the ones you draw in July.

Draw them at the size they will appear on the page, not larger. A vine practiced across a whole sheet does not transfer to a margin an inch wide, and the hand has to learn the small version separately.

Let the Border Mean Something

Use one border for promises, another for commands, another for verses you are memorizing. Now the decoration is doing work.

You will recognize the pages across a room, and years later you will still know why that one was marked.

Write your key somewhere at the front of the Bible so you do not forget it by autumn. Two lines in the flyleaf is enough.

Draw One Tonight

Pick a verse you already love, open to it, and put a running vine down the outside margin.

It takes four minutes and it will make you want to do the next one.