Creating Your First Canva Design

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh

I hope you have had the chance to sign up for a Canva account, if not why not go do it right now.

As promised, we are going to create a simple Lenten Facebook post using the following step-by-step approach. Note that I am using the Free Canva account.

Step 1

Log into your Canva account. You should now be on the Canva dashboard.

Step 2

Type into the search bar what you are looking for and hit enter. I typed in Christian Facebook Post for Lent. Be sure to click on the Canva Templates tab.

Step 3

Look through the templates and pick one that appeals to you. To help make your choice remember that you can change the text, the colors and the graphics.

Step 4

Open the design you have chosen and click "Customize this template". I am going to choose the Cream Orange Organic Cutout.

I chose this particular design because I love the quote. It's such a great reminder to people about the reason for Lent.

Step 5

You are now looking at the desktop where you will be able to start making changes to the design you chose. There are quite a few things there, but don't worry I'll walk you through them.

Hover your mouse over the design and notice the many elements that can be changed. If something can be changed it will have a purple outline.

While you can use the design as is, I like to make a few tweaks to make it my own.

Step 6

Let's start by changing the color of the text.

Click on the box that says NOTE TO SELF. If you look above the design you will see the letter A and it will be underlined with the current color. Click on the A and a color palette will appear on the left. Choose the color you would like to use. At the bottom of the color palette a "Change to all" button will appear. Click on it and all the text will change to the color you have chosen.

I was going to go with purple for the text. But when I tried it I did not like it. Instead I chose the dark grey green from the hill. But you should choose the color that you think works best.

Step 7

Let's change the font.

This design is currently using the Ovo font. Go to the top where it says Ovo and click on the drop down menu to choose a new font. As with the templates, fonts with a gold crown are not available in the free account. But as you can see there is still plenty of choice and Canva even recommends 5 possibilities.

With the NOTE TO SELF text box highlighted you can try out the different fonts to decide which one you like best. I'm going to choose Glacial Indifference. I'm also going to increase the size from 22.1 to 32. Next I'll click on the sentence box and change it to Glacial Indifference but I'm not going to change the size since I think it's quite well proportioned.

Step 8

Let's change the color of the line.

Click on the line and if you look in the top left you will see a box with the current color. As you did with the text click on the box and the color palette will open. Decide if you want to use the same color as you did for the text.

If you are happy with this design then stop. Don't forget to give your post a name other than Cream Orange Organic Cutout Christian Lent Facebook Post. I called mine Facebook Lent Post.

Step 9

Before you can post your design to Facebook you need to download it to your computer. To do that click the "Share" button in the top right hand corner. Click Download. Choose either JPG or PNG as your file type - Facebook supports both - and for this particular graphic it does not really matter. Click the Download button.

Step 10

This is the most important step! Post your design to your Facebook page and/or on your parish website as soon as your project has downloaded 😉.

This was an uber simple project but it gives you a bit of an idea of how Canva works and hopefully you are feeling a sense of accomplishment.

See ya soon! 👋

P.S. In Canada we spell colour with a "U", so if I missed correcting one, you'll know I do know how to spell - just in Canadian! 😎🍁