Canva Tips, part two

Happy Monday, folks!

Continuing on from last week’s post, today I’m sharing a few more tips for Canva!

Quick Tips

1.| Want to add a text box to your design? Sure, you could go the long route…or simply press the letter T! (Not while inside a current text box of course, silly.) And bingobango you’ve got yourself an instant text box!

2.| Do you wish you had grid lines to help you assure everything in your design is evenly placed? I totally get it. Hold the control button and press the semicolon key—voila! (Or the command + semicolon if you’re using a Mac.) Want the grid to go away? Use the exact same command.

3.| I am sure you know that you can move a selected image or text box by one pixel by using your arrow keys. But if you’d like to speed up that process, you can hold shift and now you’re moving by 10 pixels.

 

Magic Resizing

This is a trick in which you’ll need Canva For Work. This saves a lot of time when you’re creating advertisements, social media headers, etc. and you need to post to more than one outlet.

Let’s take my Redbubble advertisement for example. Here’s the Twitter post:

After resizing to a Facebook post, but not moving things around:

Not too shabby. All it needs is minor adjustments, which can sometimes be achieved by stretching all the images at once (shown below: click and drag across the entire canvas to select all images and text boxes, then resizing them all together) or sometimes you just need to shift things around.

 

 

 

 

 

Cut>It>Out

Okay, so that was a little throwback to Joey Gladstone.

Cut outs! I have no statistical data to back this up, but outside of photography, I think one of the most common images people look for are vectors with no backgrounds. Have you ever needed something without that pesky white background and you’ve spent ages trying to manually delete it, only to realize you’ve totally messed it up and need to start over again? Well, try searching Canva! They have TONS of these wonderful things that are free, but even if the one you want is $1, it is well-worth saving yourself the hassle of trying to figure out how to properly delete the background. I made up this entire image almost entirely of these “cutout” images (which by the way is the best search term to use for this. You can search “cutout animals” or “cutout food” or “cutout people”)

Now, I realize that isn’t fooling anyone. It’s obviously not a photograph. But I wanted to show an example of the types of cutout images you can find—and all of those were free! (Quite possibly a few of them were free only with Canva For Work and otherwise would have cost $1.)

This next image I made, which I turned into an animation, got thousands of impressions on Twitter in a matter of a few days and almost double my normal interactions than most images:

I’m not sure if the uptick in impressions and interactions was due to the animation (not shown because of WordPress), or if people just really like lemurs who kick back with a book.

Anyway, that’s all I have for you today!

Just kidding!

Ladies, listen up. I don’t often ask for help…usually I’m not good at it. But, the month of March (women’s history month, if you didn’t know) is fast approaching and I am cooking up something pretty lofty. I am looking for female authors, designers, editors, etc. who are interested in collaborating in a massive giveaway. I’m talking semi-daily giveaways (daily if there is enough participation) weekly giveaways, and then one major giveaway at the end of the month. The whole month of March I will be celebrating female authors from throughout history and celebrating all of us today who continue to push forward in an often male-dominated field. (No man-bashing here, I promise. I love you dudes, too.)

If you think you might be interested in participating, here’s how you can help:

• Donate a physical copy of your book(s) to the end-of-month giveaway. (And/or any “swag” you might like to donate, bookmarks, business cards, pens, pencils, etc. etc.)
• Donate an e-copy of your book(s) for me to giveaway during a semi-daily giveaway (Could  be a daily giveaway if there is enough participation).
• Commit to offering free or discounted editing/proofreading/first chapter critiques/etc. services. (Only if you currently offer professional services.)
• Commit to offering free or discounted design services (Interior or exterior, and again only if you currently offer this professional service.)
• If you’d still like to celebrate female authors with me during the month of March, but you cannot donate to the giveaway(s), please help me by committing to promote said giveaways by being on an unofficial retweet/reblog/repost team.

In exchange for the donated books or services (discounted or free), I will be doing extra blog posts in the month of March, all of which will be interviews with you ladies. You will be mentioned frequently on my social media channels, and [hopefully] retweeted many times over, extending your reach. It is my desire for this to be mutually beneficial to all participants.

The end-of-month giveaway will consist of books, books, and more books, coffee, tea, mugs, a blanket (because the recipient will need to cuddle up with all these books!), and a matching tote and gloves from Storiarts. (I haven’t decided yet on either Jane Eyre or Little Women.)

Anyway, if you have any questions or you’d like to participate somehow, shoot me a message on Twitter or email me at AilaStephensBooks@gmail.com.

You’re the best! ♥

See ya later, folks!

 

 

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