Create a Greeting Card in Affinity Designer on your iPad

1. Create a Greeting Card in Affinity Designer for your iPad: Welcome to the Class greeting cards in Affinity Designer on your iPad. There is no question. All the, we always need greeting cards for birthdays, a graduation, or Christmas, and New Year's wishes. And nothing is more personal than creating your own Greeting Card. If we have met yet, hi, my name is Angelika. I'm an artist and the DIY addict and I love everything I can do myself from suing to create ingredient cards. I have always been a creative person. I love to design greeting cards because they are easy to create and they raise a smile in the person's face who guesses lovely pressed. That's why it's a great skill to learn. In this class, I show you how to create a Greeting Card in Affinity Designer step-by-step. So even if you have no experience after this class, you'll know how to create your own card with watercolor elements. So join me now 2. Material: For this class we will use three different sets. I have picked these animals are foreign clipart because I find them really cute. I think they are perfect for an adventure card or a vacation card. Then we will use a seamless papers. That is something I use over and over again. It's created by laser glands and it contains a lot of different papers. And I usually use them according to my projects. So there are some linen paper in some watercolor paper and coconut papers. So lots of different textures because that's why I personally really love this set because it's can be used for so many different things. Then I'm also going to use the lime sunshine watercolor splashes. There are a lot of different Splashes inside. 185 actually, I'm going to use just one. But of course you can create your car completely different. It just to show you how you can do that here in Affinity Designer. And then you can of course, exchange the elements and use things according to your needs. 3. Setting up the Document: Now let's start by creating our document. And we do so by clicking here on new and new document. And then you see how many different templates you already have here. And most probably you already have some here. You have created least for me like that. I have already created some templates. I could use those as well, of course, but I'm going to use an A4 because actually when I fold my greeting card, It's an A5, then I use a forage so you can print it out and then folded and you have an A5 greeting card as it usually is. I also wanted vertically. So that's why I type here on this little icon. And then I want an artboard because I like I bought I can play them things outside my Art board and work on that. And then I'm going to set the RGB color mode. I could actually use now, the CMYK color mode because I wanted to print it actually is a good option. But when you print it at home, I think RGB is better. And I also like the colors more so that depends on what you want. If you choose CMYK, there are other colors, less colors and they are less bright. So maybe you want that as well, but usually if you print something you would choose CMYK. Then also make sure that you have turned off the margins and you don't need a bleeding as well. So we can set this to zero. So we don't have any bleed around it. So you see I changed one and it turns everything into zero because it shouldn't be fitting actually. Once I have done, let me quickly check that again. So I have my A4, I have it vertically. I have it in millimeters. I have RGB as my color mode set on Art Board, and also no margin or bleed, then I can click, Okay. We're not done with setting up our document just yet because we also need a ruler so that you need to turn on the snapping. So that's what I've done now snapping is on. And then you also here you can see an elbow snapping. And then you also need your vlogs for that. You just click here on the little bottom-right corner with the triangle. And then you pick rulers. So when you have them turned on, you can see them here on top. And I'm going to need horizontal one. So I need it's snapping into the middle. So I just move it here and there. And then I see how it snaps. Somewhere in the middle here it says zero-zero. You see? Now it's snapped. And when I release it, I have my documents set up so far 4. Create a Color Palette: Before we start creating our greeting card, let me click quickly, show you how to have a color palette. So we need to work here. In the color palette, of course. You see here it says color wheel, but we need to go to swatches. And here you have them all somehow all swatches or, or colors you might have. But you need to go here to the hamburger menu and click Add Application pounds. So it can be used in the application and the Affinity Designer applications. So let's name it. Just name it now, adventure 1 st I click. Okay. And you see I have now my empty palette called adventure. And now I need some colors. So first of all, I want to use this one for the background. So that's why I just type here on my quick colors and say, add this to current, fill to palette, and then it's, it's there. So now I want my main object here and pick some colors from there. So I get 0 here. To toggle menu, click Place. I need to move again, navigate to my folder with a greeting card and place my animal here. I just place it wherever doesn't matter right now because I just wanted to pick colors from it. So I click here on the eyedropper tool, go somewhere here and pick maybe a brown maybe we needed maybe not. I don't know yet, but I just pick some colors so I have them altogether and also can give them to you. Once I have the color here, I have in here you see everything, how changes to this strange color. But doesn't matter, we get rid of that in a second. I just need to add current fill to palette and it there, and I just use two fingers and get rid of a color again. We keep doing that. I think a green would be nice. Type on the circle here and then add current fill to palette it there again, I go back and pick the next car. I also like that one here. Imagine how it might look later. So I want this as my background, but you never know what excellence you said or what other elements you might place. So that's why I usually create myself a color palette so I can use them later at current fill to palette. Again. Most probably that's already enough. I will pick one of these bright green tones just in case and add it to my palette. Go back. And I think I'm done. I'll solve for me. It's okay. Before I go ahead, I need to get rid of this. So I swipe to the left and click Delete. So I have that ready. And now I have my color palette here. And I'm going to export that one. So I can just click here on export palette and navigate to my folder and put it there. It's called adventure as I named it, click save it there so you can import it into your designer and use colors I have used as well. 5. Adding Texture: So now we will create our background. And for that, we first need our background paper and then we put a box Philip was color and blend it in. So let's get started by placing our cocoa paper. So I go to the three lines here. Then I click Place and navigate to my folder where I have everything in. I have created one, my iCloud Drive and is called greeting card. So you see here are the materials and here also the sets I'm using. I click here on coconut from the playful, seamless textures. And then I click Open. It opens, but you don't see it right now. So what you need to do now is you need to place it. So you really need to go with your pen from top to bottom and you see it's still not right. I need to go here to my move tool and then set it here correctly. So totally covers my area here. So next step, what you can see now, it's here that we have our coconut place and we go, we're going to need a box. Now. I go here to my boxes, so it's a rectangle. And then I place a rectangle so that nothing can move. I'm going to lock this thing here. So I just swipe to the left and click Lock. And you see here this little key. It's locked and I can work on it. So now I just place my box over it. I see here is correct here It's not really makes sure it fits. You see the green line and the red line on top. Then you know, it fits. Right now, it's filled with white. And of course we don't need white, but a Color. I use a turquoise color here. That is why I pick. I don't need a stroke, so I click here on Stroke and say no stroke. So now it is just like I want it. And let's go back to the Layers palette. And you see now I have my rectangle and I have the coconut paper. So how do we make it? See now, we can just click here normal. And then we just goes through this here and see what looks nice for us. While we can use here. That's obviously something which is according to what you like. Maybe it's Overlay or Soft Light or you use topline, which I like for that work. So I'm going to use the hard light one. Once done. I have that here on top. I can also reduce the opacity. Wipe be also something I can just move to the right and to the left and you see it increases or decreases here, which is a nice thing. I'm going to leave it at 100% because I like how it looks. You can really zoom in. So you see the paper texture. We are doing all that in a vector base program, so that's not so common, but we can be Chris, it has the pixel pairs are going also, we could easily switch from vector to pixels. So that's what I personally really like about Affinity Designer. I'm going to lock that now as well. So swipe to the left click Lock and you see the little key once again. And I know we know that our box is now set up, so that's something we can get rid off. Just happened. So now we're done and we have our papers set 6. Adding Splashes and Clipart: Once you have set the foundation speaking off the background and the texture, because I think greeting cards for you need a texture we could, otherwise, it looks so flat. So I like to have a texture here. Of course, you don't need it if you want to. If you don't want to have a texture, but basically, I believe it looks much better in AKs. I want to have now one of the Splashes blend in here. And then I want to have the guys with a car just driving here, my car. So now let's go to the three lines again here and say place. And I go to the files and I have to navigate again to my folder here. It's called greeting cards and here is the lime sunshine splash. When I open it, you see again nothing happens. So I really need to put it here on top. So it's there. Make sure you don't stretch it too much. If you do, it might get blurred because after all, this is not vector, this is pixel, although we work in a vector-based program. So I prefer to have this blended in. So I go back to my layers palette. And once again, just as we did here, I go to normal. And then I choose a blending mode, which could be basically everything. Let's see, I like that darker color. Of course. Go over it, make it to your liking. I use prefer darker color now. It's sad. I could lock it once again, but i'm I can basically do that. It's just I might need to move it according to where I put my car. So let's get rid of the PEL for now. And then we finally put our car here. Again place. You see it's always the same. And you can easily create greeting cards with that muscle. So it's very easy. You can basically create hundreds of cars if you want to. As you can sell them, you don't have to use them just for your personal use. You can also sell them because all of those tests we are using have commercial use rights. So again, I place my clipboard here and then I can move it wherever I want. I really like it. Like that. Yeah. Okay. That's it. And now you could do more. You can decorate more, you can place something else. Of course, I like it to have not that many things here. But what I don't like is that this is so short, so I want to have that a bit bigger. For that, I need to unlock it. So I swipe over it again, clicky on unlock, and then make it a bit bigger. As I said, no to merge it or it gets blurry, should not increase the size of the elements. In best case, you first look what size your element has. So you know, if it fits an A4 paper and you can just use a place option and drag it over the entire paper. Once done, I just swipe again and click Lock. And that's where we are now. We have these little guys here. Make sure they end the middle. Again. You could blend them in, but we can try. It. Might look a bit strange. You see it? Yeah, it looks really strange, so I definitely don't want that, but maybe you are different than you choose your blending option. I'll leave it to normal. And now I'm just going to place the text, but before I do, Again, lock that layer so it doesn't move when I'm placing the texts, which is, I find a little bit hard here in Affinity Designer 7. Adding more Depth: In my sample project, I put here on tuplets have adhere on the bottom and adventure. And for that, my car might be a little bit too much here on top, so we might change that. But it's not so easy because I have locked everything so we first place our texts and then move whatever necessary according to it. So to place texts, you click here on the texture image. And then you can just draw something here. And you see there is a little box. And now you need to place your texts. So I clicked here on that and then click Show keyboard, and then I get a little bit of a small keyboard. So I have to type in my words here. Let's have, for now, I hope I've put the E. Let's have for now, I'm going to leave it like that. I just click Hide keyboard because I want to change here the text of course. So I double-click inside this box, so everything is Mark. And then I can pick another fall here, and I pick this one before and you see how large that is now? If I type in here and just save 45, click Okay, and it gets much smaller. We can change that. I just have it for now and maybe also change the texts or the phone in this case. But for now, I like it like that. So I click here on my layers and I want to duplicate layer so I can move that to the bottom and half already set the same font and the same size of the four. So it makes my life just easier. So just click here on the three dots, not the three lines, and say duplicate it and you see it has to locate it before you do anything. Go to the Move tool, and then you can move it easy. If you don't do it like that, it just jumps somewhere here. So it's a little bit tricky. So I double-click inside and you see what I said, it jumps somewhere. And I type not an adventure. I just don't care right now where it is, what size it is. I need to get rid of the keyboard first and have an overview where all these things are. Let me make it a bit bigger so you can see it better. When I know type in, you see it jumps a gas. So that's a bit tricky. Yeah, and now we let happen what I saw, I have another layer. You don't need that, of course, so I get rid of it. It's hard. I just want to make it smaller and yeah. Just jumps everywhere. I need to have my card back. So don't get discouraged if this happens to you. What I want now, I think I want this a little bit bigger, a little bit more bottom. And I'm also going to move that one a little bit and have that a little bit smaller. So I double-click here and say not 45, but maybe 35. And click Okay, Yeah, Move tool. Then you see here the green line that is in the center. And now I go back to my animals, make sure you unlock. Then you can move it. And you move it a little bit more to the bottom. So basically there yet, I lock it again just in case. So let's, as you can leave it now, like it is. But you could also play with colors. Maybe you want another color for you. Form. We can quickly do that. I'm going to undo that, but you might want that. So I show you how that works. Type in here. That will click so it's marked. Then click here on top right and say Fill Color. And then you pick here whatever color you want you see. You can also just use this tool here, eyedropper and pick maybe the dark blue. And then you're Color is dark blue. It's not for me, but that's just a personal preference. I like to have it black, so I go back to the black color. But if you wanted like that, you can of course do that. So it's as easy as I've just shown you. That's not a hard thing to change the color shear. It can also blend in new phones. Let me quickly show you that of course, you can go here again to the layer and then you say, here you pick whatever you want, you hardly see a change because it's black here in my case. But I'll leave it normal anyway. So it doesn't matter right now, but you might want to have something else. I just want to give you some options. Once you're done was your card. We can also think about what you could put on the background because it right now, it looks a little bit empty. So maybe we also want to have that splash there. Why not? But we might want to place it a little bit different. So I just go in last, see how that looks. I'm not sure if I wanted yet, but we can try. I move again to my folder here to the greeting card, and then pick a slime sunshine splash. Of course, I can also pick another one, but I want to have it fitting according to the rest. So I just put a tier top-left and move it a little bit, just give it a little bit of texture here. Then I can swipe to the left. Nope, I can't. I can go here and say duplicate. What I have marked the layer, at least. Make sure you have underlined it. Then go to the three dots and then you can say to vacate. And then you can put it here as well. And you see a little bit over the edges and I really like that, so I'm going to leave it like that. I just need to make sure it's under the False. So I'm going to move that here under it. So you see that more clear? Yeah. Now, it depends what you want, of course. Maybe like that. But then I don't like, let's see. Go here to the layer and again, blend it in. Color. Burn. Looks nice because it's not so overwhelming. So I guess I'm going to leave it like that. Here. Also put Color Burn. It has some texture but not too much. And I can even duplicate that and move them to the bottom as well. So you see, I'm just moving it around and I even can turn it a little bit or layer it here. I just wanted to turn it on to have some more here on the left side. Yeah. That's it. I believe that's my card. So let's have a bit smaller so you can see it. Okay, I think now you can see it best. That's how it will look. Here's the middle. And then you folded and half your card. Ready? I really like it. What do you think? So do you want to make it totally different? Of course you can. That's just an example, but you make your car, of course 8. Your Project: Congratulations, we are done with our greeting card, and now the only thing you need to do is export it and print it on your home printer or give it to an online printer and let them printed for you. You can also upload it to print minify, where you can have a real card printed on special paper. Before you do that, of course, you need to export your greeting card. So click here on the hamburger menu and then click Export. And then choose a JPEG file and whole document. And then you can say, Okay, and pick a folder where you want to export it and have it safe there. Don't forget to give it a name. Once done, click Save, and your project is safe. Please also don't forget to go to Skillshare and upload your project there. So just click here and under the video you find a button Create Project. And there you can upload your image from your iPad, for example, choose file. And then we navigate to the folder which I've just been in and upload the file we just created. And now it says to last stock, you would have to save it again in a smaller size. Give it a project title and a project description. Upload the image, and then give it some skills you have learned and publish your file. I look for what do you see, what you've created? And really we can discuss what has been difficult, what has worked well for you. And I'm looking forward to see what greeting card you've come up with.