As a mom of two, a wife, a small business owner, a publisher of Macaroni Kid, an active community member, and an operations manager by profession, I am always looking for ways to improve efficiency while delivering high quality results! I am constantly in need of design content to share on my social media pages, distribute to my local community or customers, and to make memories and keepsakes for my family and friends! I have been using Canva for about 6 months and it has been an amazing resource for both my personal and professional life. The convenience and simplicity of designing in Canva have given me back more time to spend with my family.
Prior to Canva, I would waste HOURS of my time trying to navigate multiple photo and design programs to create photo collages for social media, Thank You cards, flyers for local events, fun printouts, decorations, and props for kids birthday parties, as well as invites! When I started using Canva, I had no training or experience in designing, but I have been able to make so many beautiful professional creations in minutes with such ease!
This product is amazing and offers so many free features like templates, photos, videos, graphic elements, fonts, animations, and even a suggested color palette. You will find yourself actually WANTING to design beautiful custom creations on the daily and to learn new design techniques!
I want to share with you a few of the MANY creations I've designed in the last 6 months for my day-to-day life as a mom, small business owner, and general lover of sharing beautiful, quality content.
| Father's Day Simple Gift Designs (in the required size): |
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Have you ever been trying to order a custom made photo gift, but you keep getting an error about "aspect ratio" (Whatever that means)? With Canva, you don't even need to know what that means. Just find the photo size specifications, create a new design, select custom size, and enter the size requirements! Then, just upload the photo you want to use into Canva and add it to the design. Oh no! It doesn't fill the whole page? No worries at all; you can change the background color based on the recommended color palette that Canva provides and add some cool graphic elements to make a frame! I created these cute designs recently to order photo gift keepsakes for my husband for Father's Day. Usually I would have been so frustrated that the "aspect size ratio" was off, but, Canva to the rescue! In about 20 minutes, I was able to design these and place my order! Father's Day gifts checked off the To Do List.
On the topic of To-Do Lists... I shopped and shopped (online) and couldn't find a daily planner/ To-Do List that fit my multi-tasking lifestyle, so instead of buying one that I knew I wouldn't use, I made my own FOR FREE! This took me about 10 minutes; I started with an amazing Canva free template, I changed the colors to suit my "low on colored ink" needs, and customized it for my specific daily organization requirements. While I was designing this one, I got inspired by the simplicity and I decided to create some content for my business as well. I went ahead and created a Weekly Meal Planner and Grocery Shopping List template to add to my website as a printable for my clients.
| Custom Daily To Do List: | Weekly Meal Planner: | |
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While I was preparing my weekly meal planner template, I though about a great recipe that I wanted to share with my Macaroni Kid readers. When I dug out my old recipes I thought, "I wonder if I can make this look nice in Canva to share?" Of course I found that Canva offers some great free templates that I could simply add my recipes to, as well as a photo, and design a beautiful looking, organized recipe card to share with my readers and to organize my own personal recipe box!
| Which Recipe do you prefer? | ||
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I am so thankful that a friend told me about Canva and I want to pass on the favor by sharing this great product with you! Here are some Thank You's I designed in Canva for my professional and personal use!
My Business gave out flowers on Mother's Day and we wanted to include small Thank You Labels. I was able to easily design these beautiful, professional looking labels in Canva to print and cut out. They were the perfect size thanks to Canva free design templates!
| Thank You Labels for Business Gifts: | ||
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I also made these great Thank You cards for my daughter's themed birthday party, which was so much fun! We loved this template as it allowed us to share some photos of our DIY Harry Potter decorations from the day!
| Thank You Photo Cards: | ||
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If you are anything like me and you love HACKS and finding ways to gain efficiency and save time, you need to try Canva! No matter what you do in your day-to-day life you will find great uses for this product. By using Canva, you will not only be able to complete daily tasks quicker and easier so you have more time to spend with your family, but you will also find yourself actually WANTING to spend more time designing and creating beautiful, quality content to share with customers, family, and friends! You can sign up to try Canva for free on their website: https://www.canva.com
This article is sponsored by Canva, but all opinions are the author's own.
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