6 Easy Canva Design Tips + Tricks Every Blogger Should Know About

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Are you ready to learn some amazing game-changing Canva hacks? These tips and tricks will save you so much time and help make designing in Canva easier than ever!!

Want to skip the reading and get my Canva Tips Cheatsheet? Click right here to download the cheatsheet located in our Design Vault!

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Canva can be an amazing design tool for any online business owner.

However, when I first started using Canva I felt really limited. I remember making a babysitter info printable and I just wanted to make a simple LINE that didn’t have any fancy things on the end of it.. just a simple line!

Over the years I’ve come up with tons of tricks for Canva and since then I’ve been able to create everything from full workbooks, journals, course slide decks, and so much more using this tool.

No more feelings of limitations!

It just takes a little creative thinking!

I have an awesome audience of people that love Canva and a great Facebook group of bloggers invested in mastering their design skills.

The benefit of this is I know when people have frequent questions about how to do certain things!

This post is about the most COMMON questions I get about designing in Canva and the tricks for making the program even easier to use and more versatile for any blogger 🙂

Trick #1: Copy and Paste

This is easily the most common thing that’s asked: how do you copy and paste between different designs.

Copy and paste is probably the single most often used keyboard shortcut that I use.

I use it ALL THE TIME and it makes my life so much easier.

I often have multiple tabs open on my browser and I’m copying and pasting from tab to tab. This helps me save time and stay consistent with my designs.

Anyway, copying and pasting is super easy.

First, you just click off to the side and drag your mouse over whatever you want to copy.

Note: If you accidentally select more objects than you meant to, you can hold the shift key down and click on anything you want to de-select.

Then, use your keyboard shortcuts for copy (Ctrl/Command+C).

Next, open whatever document you want to be able to paste this into.

You can also paste it in the same document (on the same, or different, pages).

I do this a lot when I’m creating a workbook so that I can keep the border, layout, and headers consistent. This also helps me design much faster.

To paste, simply use your keyboard shortcuts again (Ctrl/Command+V).

Super simple!

If you don’t want to use keyboard shortcuts, you can also right-click your mouse to open up a menu that has copy and paste options.

Also, the header templates in that picture example are available for free in our Design Vault along with a bunch of other Canva templates and design tools. Just click here for instant access!

Related Post: Best Canva Features for Editing Templates

Trick #2: Downloading just one page

I usually get this question most when it comes to my social media templates such as my pin templates (side note: there are FREE pin templates located in the Design Library!). This also comes in handy when you want to save a cover of a workbook separately as a jpg so that you can re-upload it into Canva for mockup images or if you want to upload it to a cover generator like “my ecover maker”. Either way, this is another really easy trick!

Simply look to the right of the page (or pin) that you want to download to find the “page number”.

Once you find that number, click on “download” and then type in the number of the page to download (see below)

Interested in social media templates? Like I said, there are pin templates, Facebook image templates, instagram templates and so much more located inside the Design Library.

Plus, you can find pin templates in our DiyDesign Creators Vault (Canva only), The Mega Pin Creator Bundle (Canva + PicMonkey), or The Complete Blogger Template Toolkit (Canva + PicMonkey), AND you can also find even more pin templates in both Canva + Adobe Photoshop format in my Graphic Design Workshop.

Trick #3: Selecting an object BEHIND another object without moving it out of the way

This one is a game-changer for SO many people (it was for me!).

Have you ever tried to click on something and there’s a text box or object in the way and you end up clicking the wrong thing? Yeah, you’re not alone.

But there’s a super simple trick for this and it’s one of the many tricks I cover in my Confidently Canva course but I’ll let you in on it here…

The command key! (or ctrl key for PC users)

Simply click on the object. If something else gets selected, hold down the command (or ctrl) key and click again (WHILE holding that key). This will select the object that’s behind that first object.

If the one you’re trying to select is way in the back, you might have to keep holding command (or ctrl) and clicking. Each time you click while holding that key, it’s going to select the next object in the back.

Check out this video demonstration of my favorite Canva Tips and Tricks (it’s so much easier to show than to explain!)

 

Trick #4: Moving objects just a teeny tiny bit

I get this question a LOT in regards to positioning text just right so that it’s perfectly lined up.

When you move the text boxes around with your mouse sometimes it’s hard to get it just right.

But if you click just outside of the text box, you’ll notice that there’s a little cross arrow that looks like this:

When that symbol appears, click again. You’ll know it worked because you will not be able to type in that text box anymore.

Note: This is only necessary when trying to move a text box. If you want to move a shape or other object, you only need to click once.

Finally, use your arrow keys on your keyboard to move the object to just 1px. It’s incredibly easy to get it lined up just right doing it that way!

Side note: you can also hold down the shift key and use the arrow keys if you want to move the object 10px.

You can go back to that video in the previous tip and watch me do this at 09:08.

Trick #5: Adding a Shadow to a Cut-Out Image

This is super simple now that Canva has added the shadow feature (it works for all images- stock photos or ones you upload!)

For this example, I’ll use both! First, you’ll add whatever image you want to use. If it’s not already cut-out you can use pixlr.com, remove.bg or one of the many online sources for removing backgrounds.

==> If you have Canva Pro just use their free background remover!

Next, you’ll click on “Effects” and choose the shadow you wish to apply.

Note: If you’ve never used shadows, you’ll find it under the “you may like” section and Canva will walk you through the integration (It’s easy, you’ll just click a button that says “connect”)

From there, you can click on the shadow button again to open up more options. 

You can also choose from different kinds of shadows! For the second image, I chose to add a drop shadow. 

Of course, if you’re looking to give an image like a cover design or one of your printable pages a shadow, you can do that inside Canva using the same method but if you’d like to how it’s done check out this post!

Trick #6: Create a project with more than 100 pages

It’s time to throw a party!!! Canva 2.0 now has a NEW PAGE LIMIT of 100 pages!!! Finally, you can create a document with more than 30 pages!! 

But- what if your project exceeds 100 pages?

Don’t panic! Simply start a new project, use copy and paste to move over your layout for consistency, and then keep going.

As a mac user, I use ‘Preview’ to merge my pages. (Don’t worry, I’ll talk about PC users in one minute!)

Simply open each document in preview. If you don’t already see the thumbnail views on the side, go to “View” and choose “Thumbnails”

Next, drag and drop the pages you want to add from the second document into the first one.

If you want to select multiple pages you can do this by clicking on the first one, holding shift and then clicking on the second.

This will select all the pages in between and you can drag and drop all of them at once.

You can also reorder pages by dragging and dropping the thumbnails in the order that you want.

For PC users, there is this awesome free online tool called ilovepdf.com.

You do NOT have to download anything to your computer and it is 100% free. Simply upload both of your documents and then choose the “merge PDF” option.

Side note: I often use ilovepdf for turning PDFs from courses I take into word documents so that I can type right in the document.

There are so many simple Canva Design Tips & Tricks!

I love figuring out those little hacks, and there are so many more I could literally spend all day doing this! 

If you’re looking to learn ALL the Canva tricks as well as in-depth lessons, design lessons, and lessons on how to design social media graphics and printables, check out my Confidently Canva course.

New to Canva? Click here to get started (it’s free!)

Don’t forget to download our Canva Tricks Cheatsheet now!! Just click right here for access to our Design Vault where you can get this cheatsheet and tons of other design resources