Hello lovelies,

So as some of you will know I started my new job on Monday 😀 I won’t go into detail about it now but suffice to say I have had information overload – kind of in a good way though as I have learnt so much and I love to learn new things! I have gone into a completely different field so pretty much everything in my new job is new to me! My new colleagues are so lovely, patient and welcoming so I absolutely know I’ve made the right decision, I’m happy about it despite there being lots to learn.  Anyway…

One of the things I was told I would be using is Canva. Now I had seen Canva before and actually tried to create a logo for my blog, unsuccessfully, on it a few weeks ago so decided to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again. (Did you sing that? I bet some of you did!)

I had a little play around with Canva at home and the only things I have done so far on it are some blog featured images – which I haven’t quite mastered yet -and some Twitter posts.  Do you know the sort of thing I mean? Those quote things which some people probably think are a bit cheesey where you have an inspirational quote and a picture of a rainbow or sunset or something.  Well the beauty of using Canva is that you can create your own so you could choose your own quote and your own image.  You could use your own photo, or one of the free ones from Canva, or pay for one from Canva or even have a plain or patterned background.  Anway shall we begin?

For demonstration purposes and because it’s quite apt for this I found a quote online that says “The expert in anything was once a beginner.” How brilliant and inspiring  is that for me as a beginner!  The author of this quote is unknown, so whoever you are – thank you!  Anyway I had previously downloaded the Canva app on my iPad so firstly I opened this.

At the top of the screen you are given a choice of design templates, eg Facebook, invitation, logo, Twitter header, there are loads.  I chose Twitter post.

I then selected add text and typed in the quote I wanted. If you highlight the text you can change the font, size and colour of the text here: ( I chose courgette font, size 42 and left it black, you can choange your colour by clicking on the black circle and selecting whichever colour you like.)

Next for the background.  You can choose any preset background and there are some awesome images but to show you from scratch I just chose a plain background.  There are a few preset colours but I like to choose my own shade. So click on background (on the left) then next to the colours there is a + sign. Click + and you can move the pointer anywhere on the colour wheel to choose your shade.

I chose a pale pink and decided I wanted to make it more interesting by adding an image. Look on the left hand side of the screen and you will see at the top a magnifying class icon that says search. Search any topic you like and there will be a variety of images that come up. Some are photos, some graphics, some simple symbols… I searched ‘learning’ and selected a photo of some books (this was a free photo.)

I highlighted the picture and clicked ‘down layer’ to put it behind the writing.  I adjusted the size so it looked good with the writing and decided I would change the transparency so the writing stood out more. Next to the picture of the dustbin (which is obviously for when you want to delete something you have selected) is the transparency control. I played around a little with this until I get the look I was happy with.

When I chose my final result, I went to the top right and clicked download, then download an image. This downloaded the image I had made and saved in to my photos.

I hope this has made it quite straightforward for you to understand how to use Canva if you hadn’t tried it already. Most of what I have done has been through experimenting and trial and error which which, for this, isn’t gong to do anybody any harm.

There are so many more things that you can do on Canva so I’m look forward to exploring it further. I really am no expert yet but I would like to get better at this and I’m sure I will 🙂 If you have any questions please feel free to ask and I will try my best to help you.