Crafting Poetry One Syllable at a Time
Posted on September 28, 2017 by Colleen M. Chesebro
In today’s busy writing, blogging, and marketing world there is one constant – We do our best when we learn and share with each other. I have been blessed to belong to one of the best author/blogging communities around the web. Today, I
beggedasked, Marsha Ingrao, to share with my readers her tutorial on how to use Canva. I can attest that it works because I created the graphic above from her instructions on canva.com. ❤
Authors need to create or hire an expert graphic artist to create book covers, headers or illustrations for marketing on their blog and on social media. They may be asked to speak somewhere, and they have to create a flyer.
Their blog post may require an infographic like the one below. The problem is that many of us who write do not have an artistic bone in our bodies. Worse, we may be operating on a tight budget that doesn’t include hiring an artist.
The good news is that we don’t have to.
You could exchange work with an artist who can’t write, but that’s hard to find.
Others of us have sneaky ways of being an expert graphic artist. Mine is Canva.com.
You can use any photo editing program you wish. Some people swear by PicMonkey. Others put their nose in the air and tell you that only Photoshop or other Adobe products will work. I’ve tried both of those, but I choose Canva.
But don’t go away, just yet. Bookmark the tutorials because you may go back time and time again. Here are a few quick tricks from the tutorials you can use as a writer.
To a teacher “stupid” is the ultimate cuss word, but to myself, it’s a great reminder.
Before the Tutorials
This example is pretty simple. I used a template for the text, and I like the look. However, it does not have the importance that the title indicates. This is not a party library even though I might have a party personality and like the font.
This is an A+ library. The best books, the best authors reside here in my hand-picked collection for you.
The insinuation here is that if you are in this top-rated collection, then you must be a pretty good author.
After the Tutorials
After I worked through this lesson, I changed my Always Write photo above by taking out some of the stars. I also changed the font to make it more scholarly rather than partying at the library.
The tutorial suggests that using large and small fonts together is good. Combining bold or italics and normal fonts add interest.
Canva recommends changing the letter spacing so that the large and the small lettering covered about the same width. So I made that change after reading another tutorial. The spacing button is on the top bar to the right of where you find the color box. If you can’t find it, click “Need a Clue.”
Tutorial six teaches about aligning the words to make a point or fit the photo. You also learn to enlarge the font of the most important words. The main font should fill the space.
Which of the two do library illustrations do you think is more useful and why?
Tip Two: Use Grids
In the second lesson of the tutorials, you crop pictures and put them into virtual grids. I experimented with several grid templates as I wrote this post.
Grids are fun and easy. You drag your uploaded picture or a Canva picture to the canvas, and if you put it in just the right place, it pops right into the grid, like a cracker into someone’s mouth.
You don’t have to crop the picture. It will snap into place no matter what size it is, but unless the photo is the roughly the same shape as the grid, it distorts.
Therefore, if you want to crop it first to get the parts you like best to show, then drag it, to the canvas, but don’t move it until it clicks.
Sally Cronin asked me to do a guest post on her blog. I had never thought about advertising before the fact until just recently.
Why not, authors? Make announcements on your Facebook Page, Twitter, Linked In and other social media with a Canva collage of pictures you might use. In this case I used pictures that did not all get included. I liked the pictures, but couldn’t find a place for them in the post.
Here’s another tip. Sneak in a bit of your brand, even on a guest post. See the touch of turquoise? That’s me!
This next slide was simply a fun creation to teach the use of analogous colors or three colors next to each other on the color wheel. The slide is a template, which makes it super simple to use.
You will recognize the next picture which illustrates a couple of elements.
By the way, when I use only one picture, I don’t go to the effort of using a grid. However, I notice that my top and bottom borders are different sizes. Don’t worry if you have an astigmatism. Grid lines come up to tell you when you’re in the zone.
The suggestion of keeping colors simple and choosing only three makes this picture striking.
To eliminate most of the colors, I experimented with Canva filters.
After I used the filter, I changed the background color to match the darkest blue in the picture. I had to do this by sight, but you can use hex codes if you already know the color you want. The hex code appears when you hover over the color button.
Next, I matched the text to the slightly yellow clouds. Compare this to the canva project above with the same picture. Which do you like better? It gives me two ads to use without spending very much time on the second one.
This is a newsletter infographic. You can buy all sorts of pictures that contain computers. They are only a dollar from Canva but why not take several pictures of your own computer?
In this next example, I chose three colors from the photo, and the green just happened to match the wire basket on my table as well as the picture on the computer.
This photo had a problem. When I tried to insert my photo into the screen, it would not align with both the top and the sides.
So, I solved that problem by adding a black rectangle “element” to cover the screen, then inserting the photo on top of the “new” black screen. Unfortunately, I need to go back and resize my new screen.
In order to pick out details, you can enlarge your workspace on Canva, but sometimes I don’t think I need to do that for a quick fix. In this case, I should have.
Interestingly though, the alignment mistake turned out to the good. I can now change the picture to reflect the topic of what I’m writing. Maybe it’s my book cover or a picture from the book.
I hope you see how versatile this tool can be. You can upgrade to get a few other amenities like additional downloadable formats. Trust me, you don’t ever need to upgrade to do what I showed you today. It took about an hour to read through the first nine tutorials, upload a few photographs, and create these illustrations.
For questions, you can email me at tchistorygal@gmail.com.
If you would like me to create Canva images for you, I can do that too, for a fee. However, why not do it yourself? You, too, can be an Expert Graphic Artist.
FIND THIS POST ON GOOGLE DOCS
Thank you, Colleen, for inviting me to write a guest post for your blog. I hope your readers love it. 🙂
Marsha 🙂
How to Use Canva to Create Easy Social Media Posts in 2017
How Canva.com Turned Me into a Graphic Artist
Marsha Ingrao
Marsha Ingrao researches tips for bloggers, writers, and photographers to keep them moving forward toward their goals. A former teacher and instructional consultant for 25 years, Ingrao experiments and gives readers the heads-up regarding best practices for their blogs. As a reader, she reviews books and provides additional exposure for indie and traditionally published authors. As a teacher, she trains virtual assistants to provide services, especially in social media. Ingrao has one book published by Arcadia Press, and one self-published by Lulu.
Thanks for stopping by to meet Marsha. Now get creating on Canva.com.
Category: Authors Supporting AuthorsTags: Always Write, blogging, Canva.com, graphic designs, Marsha Ingrao, marshajustwrites.com, social media
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“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
—Dylan Thomas
Click: What is a Rhyme Scheme?
Disclaimer: My book review posts contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I earn a small commission to fund my reading habit if you use the links on my book reviews to make a purchase. You will not be charged extra, and you’ll keep me supplied in books that I can review. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. Thank you.
This website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Colleen M. Chesebro is an American Poet who loves crafting paranormal fantasy and magical realism, cross-genre flash fiction, syllabic poetry, and creative nonfiction. Colleen sponsors a weekly syllabic poetry challenge, called Tanka Tuesday, on wordcraftpoetry.com where participants learn how to write traditional and current forms of haiku, senryu, haiga, tanka, gogyohka, tanka prose, renga, solo-renga, haibun, cinquain, Etheree, nonet, and shadorma poetry. Colleen's syllabic poetry has appeared in the Auroras & Blossoms Poetry Journal, and in “Hedgerow, a journal of small poems.” She’s won numerous awards from participating in the Carrot Ranch Rodeo, a yearly flash fiction contest sponsored by carrotranch.com. In 2020, she won first place in the Carrot Ranch Folk Tale or Fable category, with her story called “Why Wolf Howls at the Moon.” Colleen is a Sister of the Fey, where she pursues a pagan path through her writing. When she is not writing, she is reading. She also loves gardening and crocheting old-fashioned doilies into works of art.
Very detailed and informative. Another tool to enhance our work..
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Thanks, Sally. This is a fun program. The templates create show great visuals. ❤ Hugs.
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Very helpful Colleen.. hugsxx
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Thanks, Sally. I love Canva. It helps the right-brained- not too creative people like me to feel great about their art work! 🙂
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Reblogged this on Legends of Windemere.
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Many thanks for sharing Marsha’s tutorial. ❤
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You’re welcome
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Thanks so much Charles! I hope it is helpful to lots of people. I love Canva, and have used it about a year now. They have tons of support, but if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. It only makes me smarter! 🙂
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Happy to help. Hope a lot of people use it.
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There is another program that is similar called Crello. I will have to check that one out in more detail. Thanks again. 😀
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Me too. There’s no agenda in promoting it – it’s free, but what a great program!
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Thanks for these tips!
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You’re welcome. Marsha’s the best! ❤
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Indeed :-)!
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Thanks for reading and commenting, Bee!
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You are very welcome!
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🙂
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I love Canva! Use it all the time and have even created a book cover using it.
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I’m impressed! I do love this program. Sarah uses it al the time too. 😀 ❤
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That’s very cool. I need to work on one of those, too. 🙂 I’m nervous about that because I still don’t feel like a graphic artist and I don’t know what sells a book. We all judge a book by its cover, and so I say good for you, P.C.!
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Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
An excellent, detailed and informative article by, Marsha 👍😃
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Thanks, Chris. Canva even has some ebook covers in their templates. I don’t know how good they are. 😉
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Thanks, for the reblog, Chris! I’m going Wahoo in my brain! Thanks again, for suggesting this post, Colleen! 🙂
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My pleasure, Marsha – Great Post 👍😃
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🙂
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Love Canva! This was a fantastic tutorial.Thanks to Marsha for this content.
Many thanks to you both for sharing. 🙂
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Marsha is the one that got me interested in using Canva. Now, I love it! ❤
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And now look at what you can do! I’d love for you to do a guest post for me about using the adorable little cartoon Colleens. Those are so cute. 🙂
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Marsha, these cartoons are called Bitmoji. You get them on your phone through the App store on Apple and Android. You create your character and then I email the image and save it to my photos for use on my blog. Really easy. You have to use your smart phone though. ❤
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Do they just happen to look like you???
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LOL! You are so cute. You pick out the hair, hair color, etc. There is even a wardrobe of clothes you can try. Are on on Iphone? Go to the App store and search for bitmoji. You will have so much fun and be able to make your bitmoji look just like you. ❤
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I’m installing it right now! I saw some other cartoon and drawing apps that turn photos to cartoons of people. How cool is that?
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I love it. You can really make it look pretty close to you. I can’t wait to see “Marsha!” 😀 ❤
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You will have a chance to see “me” pretty soon. I tried to find a way to put it in this comment box but I’m not sure how to do it. 🙂
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Thank you so much, Natalie. Let me know if you have any questions. As Colleen says, it’s pretty self-explanatory, but if you need encouragement, Colleen can give you my email.
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Thank you, Marsha! I’ve been using Canva for over a year now. Love it, and continue to learn something new all the time. This is a great post. Cheers!
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Cheers back to you Natalie! Thanks for checking out the post. Have you done any of the Canva tutorials. I had not until I wrote the post. Even now, I haven’t done them all. I learned quite a few tips from the nine that I did, and it took about an hour to go through that many since I was already familiar with Canva. Let me know if you might like to do a guest post on my blog about Canva. 🙂
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I’ve heard of Canva before, but I felt it might be too complicated to learn. Thanks to your post, I will try to learn it.
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Hi, Frank. It’s actually pretty user friendly. I have fun with it. ❤
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Frank, I’m going Whoopeeee! Let me know if you have questions. The support and tutorials on Canva are amazing, but sometimes you wish you had a voice to go with them. 🙂 Good luck with your experimenting in Canva!
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Thanks Colleen and Marsha. I love Canva but haven’t been using it much recently. I’ll bookmark this post and reblog.
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Many thanks, Olga. This program is easy to use and you get professional looking results. ❤
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Wow!, thanks, Olga! You are awesome! Let me know if you have any questions. 🙂
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Thanks for sharing, Olga. This is a great tutorial. ❤
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I am getting more and more into Canva and this was a great help, thanks Marsha and Colleen 🙂
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You’re welcome. I really enjoy this program. ❤
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Thank you so much for your comment, Judy! I’m glad you’re using it, too. 🙂
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Yes, there are certainly some lovely images that can be made with Canva 🙂
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Thanks, Judy. It seems like it adds a bit of polish to photographs that may be ok or even so so. I had some classroom shots today that showed Kiwanis members passing out dictionaries. Since I didn’t have all the members in one shot, I used all the pictures and made a collage as a Facebook Cover photo. It’s much easier to use than Photoshop and the text comes out cleaner. 🙂 Thanks again for reading. Let me know how it works for you.
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I know there are so many more things I can do with it and I will have to make time to have more of a play 🙂
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I feel the same way. One thing I’ve noticed is that I can use my photos over several times in new ways. The other thing I’m learning is from searching for images. I realize that I could take an assortment like the pictures they have on file if I have time. If not. I can buy theirs. What I can’t do is draw, so I’m a sucker for their drawings. 🙂
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I can’t draw either so will check those out! 🙂
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Great tips! Many thanks to you both.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Hello, Pete. Glad you stopped by. Hugs. ❤
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Hi Coleen! Greetings from Beetley. 🙂
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Thanks, Pete! 🙂
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My pleasure!
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I’ve used Canva to create 4 ebook cover images for short stories I’ve published. It didn’t make sense to spend a lot on professionally designed images for stories I make available for free. But if you’re planning to hire a pro to design a cover, you can use Canva to create a preliminary design for the professional to work with. Couple of other points: you can upload your own photos or images sourced from elsewhere (hopefully without copyright violations) and use them with Canva tools. And being able to layer images and use transparency makes it relatively easy to create some pretty nice images. You aren’t billed for Canva elements until you download a design, so you can experiment as much as you like. It really is a great resource.
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Thanks for sharing your experiences, Audrey. I have enjoyed working with Canva, too. I’m glad you stopped by. ❤ Hugs.
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Great comment, Audrey. I used Canva to create my Always Write logo. It looks pretty juvenile, but my web designer took my childish attempts at art and polished it up a bit, and I love it. That way I had a part of the process and way to express myself other than words. Photographs don’t work too well for logos. Again, thanks for the great comment. 🙂
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This was fab Marsha. Lots of good help for me to start wrapping my brain around this. Bookmarked for referencing. I’m going to try it again. I know where to go with questions! Thanks for having Marsha over Colleen! 🙂 ❤
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Hugs to both of you ladies. I love all this learning together. ❤
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Me too! ❤
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Thanks for the encouraging comment, Deb. You uplift so many of us and introduce us. I would never have met Colleen had you not introduced us on your FB group. I enjoy your FB group so much. I wish I could bring together people so well on Networking Bloggers. I think I have too many irons in the fire to post other people’s links regularly. That’s part of what makes your FB group so great. So thanks for the introduction! 🙂
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Aw shucks Marsh, thanks for the compliment. It’s a delicate balance trying not to bite off more than we can chew. Just running 2 blogs is enough to keep your busy Marsha. I belong to so many FB groups and don’t have the time to visit them, so, like, social media, I find what mediums work best for me and that’s where I gravitate to. I have 4 groups on FB I spend a bit of time at that keep me busy and spend most of my social media time on FB and Twitter as it seems that is whee my peeps are. 🙂
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That’s where most of mine are, too. I’ve made quite a few great friends on both through the groups, but it does take time. Have a great week. Let me know when you’re ready to do an interview. Hows the book coming? 🙂
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Thanks Marsha. I’ll definitely get back to you. As I had a lot of rewriting to do, I’m hoping to get the book off to the editor by mid next week. As soon as I do, I’ll let you know. ❤
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Some of my topics are travel, journaling, blogging, organization, poetry, writing a nonfiction book, teaching strategies, how to write local history, and book reviews, of course. Let me know if any of those ring your blog’s bells. 🙂 Have a great week, my dear friend. 🙂
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Well since I’m a lover of journaling, that would be an excellent topic. 🙂
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Ok, you got it.🤓🤓🤓
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Oh, Oh, Marsha. I just found your comment in spam. ❤
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That’s me, Spammy! 🙂
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LOL! Not you! 😘❤️
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Reblogged this on M J Mallon Author and commented:
Excellent guest post from Marsha Ingrao about using a design tool called Canva via Collen Chesebro’s blog.
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Thanks for sharing, Marie. Excited to hear how your new job is. ❤
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I’m so honored Marje! I was just telling Deb how much I love your FB group, and if it hadn’t been for that group and all that you do, I would never have gotten acquainted with Colleen, and had the opportunity to share this post. What a great experience it has been to write a guest post for Colleen. 🙂
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Thanks, Marsha. I learn everything from others. It’s great to connect and learn while making friends. ❤️
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I do learn best from my friends. 🙂 It’s been a great experience. 🙂
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Thank you Marsha, appreciate your kind comment about our lovely FB group. So glad you got acquainted with Colleen, she is a true gem. 🙂
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Yes, I agree! 🙂
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Reblogged this on BOOK CHAT and commented:
In an excellent guest post on Colleen Chesebro’s blog, Marsha Ingrao shows us how to use Canva.
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Many thanks for sharing how to use this fun program. Canva makes your posts look good! ❤
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Awwwww, Michelle, you are making me happy twice in one day! Thanks for the reblog. I’m honored. Colleen, see what you’ve done! Guest posting has been such fun! 🙂
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You’re most welcome. I am always happy to share the good stuff. ❤
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There you go again. 🙂 Have a great week. 🙂
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You too, Marsha!
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Networking is fun. ❤️
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It is! I feel like I’ve gained a whole additional set of friends this year! 🙂
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Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
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Thank you for sharing Marsha’s excellent post about using Canva. ❤
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Thank you for posting this. Sorry, last days i had a big delay, got a drive-by-virus into my browser. But i had found and shot ’em. LOL
Have a great week ahead. 😉 Michael
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Glad you’re back. Thanks again and keep that computer safe! 😀
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Thank you, and sorry for the delay! 😉 Michael
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Thank you so much! I’m honored! 🙂
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Very helpful and informative post. Thank you, Marsha and Colleen. I need to spend more time experimenting with Canva. I have seen some good things done with it, including the examples you have both shared here. Charli Mills did some wonderful ones over at the Carrot Ranch too. However, I’ve got some learning to do. I couldn’t see how to download some images that I had made, and changes I made over existing ones, overwrote them rather than saved as new. I’ve bookmarked this great article for future reference. Thanks.
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I had to play with it a bit Nora, but once I figured a few things out it’s been great. I find images from Pixabay.com and upload them to Canva. Lots of fun ideas. I used to use PicMonkey but they charge now. ❤️
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I tend to make my images in PowerPoint. Someone made some in Canva for me, but I can’t figure out how to download and use them. PowerPoint works fine for most of my needs. Pixabay is a great source of photos. I have a few other favourites too.
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Norah, there is a download button on Canva. Perhaps things have changed since you first used the program. ❤
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Thanks, Colleen. I need to make more time for learning it. 🙂
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Absolutely fantastic article. Thank you.http://www.logotools.net/
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You’re welcome. 🍀💚🍀
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