From Procreate To Canva: Design Watercolor Christmas Cards

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Priscilla an Illustrator, surface pattern designer, and skill share top teacher. I'm the owner of Cardwell and Inc, where I specialize in iPad based digital design. In this class, we're diving into one of my favorite holiday projects, creating beautiful personalized Christmas cards using the Procreate app and the free version of Canva. I will guide you step by step to create stunning watercolor motifs in Procreate and then show you how to transform them into printed greeting cards or animated posts to share with your friends and family. So whether you are a seasoned digital artist or a beginner, this class is designed to make using these apps easy and enjoyable. If you're already comfortable with these tools, you will pick up workflow tips to speed up your design process. In this class, you're going to learn how to create three digital watercolor motifs. Get an in depth look at using Procreate Selection Tool and save selections to simplify your workflow. Remove backgrounds from your watercolor motifs effortlessly for clean professional designs that can be placed on any background. And finally, how to navigate Canva to design a folded greeting card or an animated social media post. All you will need to take this class is an iPad, a pressure sensitive stylus. I'll be using the Apple Pencil, the Procreate app, and the free version of Canva, whether on the app or the website. In the class resources, I've also included my custom Procreate watercolor brush set, a procreate Canvas, color palette, and a curated Pinterest and splash board for inspiration so that you are using the same tools that I'm using every step of the way. So if you are ready to learn some new techniques and create some festive greeting cards, grab your iPad, and I will see you in class. 2. Class Project: B. Before you start on the Lessons in class project, be sure to download the provided resources from the resource and project section. This will be on the web version, not the mobile app. Download them to your file storage, and once they've been downloaded, you can import them into Procreate as we progress through the course. Now, for that class project, we're going to keep it really simple. Take a screenshot of one of your motifs in Procreate or one of your card designs created in Canva and upload it to the project section. You can do this at anytime during the course. If you play around with a different color palette or make a variation on one of the designs, I would love to see it. All right, enough talking, let's get started. Meet me in the next lesson where I'll walk you through the canvas setup in Procreate for our Christmas motifs. 3. Setting Up The Canvas: In this lesson, we are going to begin with the Canvas setup. If you have opened your Procreate file in the app, it will turn up in your app gallery. Tapping will open the document. Once you are in the Procreate interface, on the top left, you can tap on the wrench icon to see the Actions menu and then tap the Canvas tab to see the Canvas settings. At the bottom of this menu, select Canvas information. In the dimensions tab on the left, I've created this document as a five by seven inch card, which is the normal size for the front of a greeting card. It is 400 DPI or dots per inch, so you have a bit more flexibility with your design resolution as 300 is the industry standard for printing documents. If you head down to the color profile, it is in CMYK, which is cyan magenta, yellow and black, and it's the color profile for physical printers. Using this setting will ensure that your colors are closest to the colors that will print on your color printer. RGB, red, green, blue is generally used for digital artwork on screens. CMYK colors may look a bit less vibrant, but will be the closest to what your printer will show. Tapping done will return you to the Canvas menu. In this menu, scroll down to the drawing guide and tap to activate the toggle. Underneath, you'll see the text that says Edit Drawing Guide, and tapping will open a new page. We're going to select the text to D grid and set our opacity to a point where you can see the grid lines, but they are not going to be overpowering. The other settings you can see at the bottom of my screen and assisted drawing is also turned off. At the top, tapping any color in the color line will allow you to adjust the color of your grid. Then if you tap done at the top right, it will take you back to the main view. Next, let's tap on the preferences tab so that your tools are set up the same as mine and we can achieve the same effects. I've activated the right hand interface, so my size and opacity sliders for my brushes are on the right hand side of my screen. Dynamic brush scaling is also activated, which is absolutely essential for the watercolor brushes to work properly as we paint. My brush cursor is active, so you can see where my cursor is on the screen. In pressure and smoothing, I have my stabilization at 6.9 and I've increased my pressure curve so that I do not have to press too hard on my screen for my pressure stroke, as the watercolor brushes we are using will be pressure sensitive, and that is all for the settings. Next on the top right hand side, head to your color disc and tap to open the color menu. At the bottom right, you'll find the palette section, tap to open, and then scroll through the list until you locate your Christmas color palette. Tap the three dots on the right hand side and you can select set it as default. This means that when you head back to your color disc view, this palette will be at the bottom for easy access. Next, tap the brush icon to open your brush menu, select your Christmas watercolor brush set that you imported from the class resources and select the textured watercolor brush. Tapping will activate it in blue. This is a pressure sensitive brush. When you create a stroke, a light touch will give a thinner stroke and more pressure will give you a thicker stroke if you are using an Apple pencil. Try a few strokes on your canvas going from light pressure to heavy pressure, and then back to light pressure to test this out. Keep going until you become a bit more familiar with the pressure required to achieve the stroke that you want. Reducing the size of the brush will also reduce the width size of the stroke when pressure is applied. You can adjust the brush size using the slider and then try the different sizes on your screen a few times until you find a setting that feels comfortable. Now is a good time to refresh the gestures and procreate. A two finger tap on your screen will undo a stroke and a three finger tap will redo a stroke. You can also do this with the arrows at the bottom of the sliders. To remove all the strokes on a layer at the same time, a three finger circle on the screen will erase them all. Finally, a three finger swipe down on the screen will bring up a quick menu that will allow you to access the cut, copy and paste functions easily, and tapping the X will remove this menu. Okay, so on the right hand side, tap the icon with the two squares to open your layers menu. At the top, you have your watercolor texture which is locked so that you don't move it as you paint, and the layers for painting are Christmas cards below it. At the bottom, you have two guide layers, a triangle and a circle that will help us structure our motifs. To begin with, we're going to activate the triangle layer by tapping the square until we see the tick, and then tap on a painting layer until it's blue to activate it. That's it for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to start on our first Christmas motif. 4. The Present Stack Pt 1: In this lesson, we are going to create a minimal Christmas card featuring a stack of three presents. This will also get us familiar with some of the tools in the selection menu in Procreate. In our Layers panel, we have our triangle guide activated at the bottom and a new painting layer that should be selected in blue. We're going to use the selection menu to create save selections of all the presents in our present stack first and save them, and then we will add watercolor and details to our artwork. The left hand side, head over to the ribbon icon, which is our selection menu and tap to open. In the menu at the bottom of your screen, select the rectangle shape and make sure that the ad icon is also highlighted in blue. Then take your stylus and use the guide to draw out a watercolor rectangle, about one square within the base of the triangle for our first present. Going to use the two D guide to make it symmetrical on both sides and take it up to a height of about eight squares. Remember, you can always use the two finger tap on your screen to undo if it's not quite where you want it placed and try again. Now in the bottom menu, tap the heart icon that says save and load and then use the plus to save the area of your selection. Next, we're going to add another selection area so that we can create a ribbon around this box. In our bottom menu, this time, tap the minus icon labeled remove until it is blue. Now we're going to use the rectangle tool to cut out the areas where a ribbon would wrap around the present vertically and horizontally. Horizontally, I'm going to cut out I think the fourth and fifth box to make it symmetrical and then the center two boxes vertically using my two d grid to remove this area from our existing selection. Take your time and do it carefully. Once you're done, head over to the save and load icon in the bottom menu and use the plus to add this new selection to our saved selections. We're going to create one more save selection for this present. In the bottom menu, tap on the text invert until only the area outside of the ribbon is selected without those lines across it. Then we're going to head back to our save and load and also add this area to our saved selections. Now we can tap on the second selection in our list with the ribbon cut out and we're going to add the second and third present box to the stack. In the bottom menu, make sure that the rectangle tool is active and also the ad. We're going to leave a little bit of negative space between the boxes for visual interest. I'm going to use my triangle and two D grid to position my second present, about two squares narrower and about half a square above the first present. I'll make the height about 6.5 squares and use my grid to make sure that it is symmetrical on both sides of my triangle frame. Again, if at any point you want to redo, just use that two fingertap. For my last present box, I'm going to do the same. I'll move about two boxes in to maintain that triangular shape and then half a box left for the negative space between the two presents and a total height of about 6.5 boxes. I'll use my triangle frame to make sure that it's symmetrical on both sides and that is our selections complete. Now we can head down to the save and load icon and save this selection too, and we are ready to paint head to the right to the layers menu, and at the bottom, your triangle guide layer can be unticked. Then with this selection still active, on the top right of the interface, we can head to our brush menu. In our Christmas brush set, select the watercolor textured brush and set the size at large, because we're going to use it to fill the entire area of our selection. I just want to pause here to bring a pretty awesome update to your attention. You can set brush sizes for different brushes by tapping on the slider. Then in the preview that comes up, tapping on the plus to save that brush size to procreates memory. You'll then see a blue line to show that it has set, and now anytime you want to go back to that size selection, it's saved. These selections are also brush specific and if you ever want to delete them, you just tap and press the minus to remove it. Okay, so moving on on the top right in our color studio, I'm going to select a brown paper color from the palettes. I love the look of brown paper wrapped Christmas presents, but feel free to choose whatever color you prefer. Now we can paint our selected area of the presents and try and do this without taking your stylus off the screen and cover the entire selected area. Once that is done, we're going to add a bit of visual interest by creating some shadows on the left and the bottom of the present boxes as if the light source is coming from the right hand side. We're going to create a stroke on the left and a stroke on the bottom of each box. Then to blend them out, head up to our brush menu and select the watery Paul blender brush and use this to blend the colors together by just going over the hard edges of your stroke. Feel free to adjust the slider if you need to to make it smaller or larger. Once that's done, we are going to create a little highlight on the right hand side by heading to our brush set again and selecting the bleed brush. In the color studio on the right, select a white color from our color palette. Use your slider to decrease the size and paint on top of the areas on the right to add a little highlight in white. You can always undo with two fingers or adjust your pasity if you don't want it as bright. That is the base colors for our presence completed. Join me in the next lesson to create the details on the wrapping paper of our presents. 5. The Present Stack Pt 2: In this lesson, we are going to add the details to our present stack. In your selection menu, make sure that your present stack selection is still active. If it is not, just tap on your selection menu, head to the save and load and tap that selection again. Next head to your Layers panel and select a new painting layer to create the details for our first present. In the brush menu, we're going to select the seven star brush from our brush set, and in the color studio, we're going to select a red color. Using your slider, set your size at about 5% so your stars are not too large. Then in the selection area, use the stamp brush to place star stamps all over the wrapping paper. They do not have to be perfect, the more organic, the better. Loosely layer them over all of the four parts of the bottom present box and remember that you can always undo with a two finger tap if you want to reposition them. We will come back to the ribbon area on this present a little bit later. For our second present, we're going to create a dot pattern of red and white spots on the brown paper. In your layers menu, use the plus symbol at the top to create a new layer with a normal blend mode. This is so that the white will be visible and doesn't just blend into the watercolor. In your brush menu, select the solid circle brush. Select red for the color and then randomly put dots across your selection area. Just leave a bit of space so that they look randomly scattered. Remember that you can always use a two finger tap to undo if you want to try again. Once you're happy, head back to the color studio and select a white color and use your stamp brush to distribute some white dots in between the red dots on the brown paper. It adds really beautiful contrast. Once you're happy with the placement, we're going to take it one step further and add some string detail onto this present. Head back to the brush menu and select the monoline brush and place it on a small setting at about 2% using the slider. In the color menu, set the color back onto red, and in our layers panel, we can select a new painting layer. Loosely create a line around the middle of the present horizontally. Pause and hold your stylus on the screen, and this will activate the quick shape menu at the top. If you tap line in this menu, it will allow you to adjust the nodes of this line until you are happy with its placement. I'm going to create about three lines horizontally and three lines vertically criss crossing each other. A reminder as we do this that quick shape works not just for lines, but also for polygons, for rectangles, for triangles, circles, and so you can use it when you are wanting to create shapes as well. All right. Once you are happy with the placement of your lines, we can create a free hand decorative bow in the center of the present with a few strings hanging down and that is the detail for our second present done. Finally, our top present. This, we're going to create thick diagonal lines as a detail. Use your slider on the right to increase the size of your monoline brush to about 16% then take your time and for each line you draw, hold your stylus on the screen if you want to activate the quick shape menu at the top to adjust your lines. Remember, you can always do the two finger tap on your screen to undo a stroke if you're doing it freehand. Continue with your lines until you're happy with their position to finish up, we're going to create a ribbon bow on the top of this last box and then go back and add that ribbon detail around our first present. Head to the top left to the selection menu icon and long press to reactivate the bottom menu, tap on the text invert until you see the areas around the boxes clear without those gray diagonal lines to indicate that they have been selected. The right in your brush menu, select the watercolor textured brush and in the color studio, a red color from our palette. In our layers panel, select a new painting layer. Now we can start to create the bow with loose strokes, starting with light pressure at the present to heavy pressure to show the ribbon loops and then back to light pressure connecting it back to the box. We're going to repeat this with overlapping strokes to create a decorative bow. Just keep going with that same light, heavy light pressure all the way around. Now to complete the ribbon on our first present. In the layers panel, select a new painting layer, and then we are going to fill in the ribbon area on the first present. Don't worry about going out of the edges a bit because a handy little hack will deal with that in a moment. I'm going to go over my ribbon twice just to make it a little bit darker. Now to deal with that overlap on our edges, long press on the selection menu to reactivate it, and then in our save and load area, select that first selection of the entire present box that we saved. In the bottom menu, select invert until the area around that first box does not have the great lines. Then in the top menu, tap on the arrow icon to activate the transform menu. We're going to use our stylus to take the selection area and just move it off the canvas to delete it, and now you should have the perfect ribbon leftover. Isn't that fantastic? Deselect your selections menu and on the right in the layers panel, create a new layer in our brush menu, select your monoline brush and a black color. And just create a line at the base of the bottom present to create the illusion of the ground and the presence resting on it. That's our design complete. At the top, tap the wrench icon and deactivate your drawing guide to take a look without that two D grid. In your layers panel, select all your layers by swiping to the right until they are blue. And then in the top menu, tap on the text that says group to group the layers. Next, tap this group and in the side menu, select rename and name it Christmas presents. Swipe to the left on this group and select duplicate to make a copy and then deselect the bottom group by unticking the box on the right. I always like to save a layered group as a backup. Next, we're going to tap on the top group and this time in the side menu, select flatten and make it a single flattened layer. So this is a really simple design, but you can apply the techniques to create a host of different color palettes, details and arrangements. I also love the versatility of this design because you can use it as a festive card, but also as a birthday or celebration card. That's all for this lesson. Take some time to be creative and have a play with the skills you've learned. You can always check out the Pinterest board that is linked in the class resources to get some inspiration and then join me in the next lesson to create our next design. 6. The Christmas Ornament: In this lesson, we are going to create a watercolor Christmas ornament. In the las panel, untick the flattened Christmas present design, and at the bottom of the layer, tick to turn on the circle frame and tap on the layer until it is active in blue. At the top left, we can use our wrench icon to reactivate in our Canvas the two D drawing guide. Next, we can tap the ribbon icon to activate our selection menu. At the bottom, make sure automatic selection is chosen and the ad function should also be activated in blue. Now we're going to tap our stylus outside of the circle frame until it is blue, and then in our save and load menu, we're going to add the selection to our saved areas. Next, in the bottom menu, we're going to select the text invert and again, save this selection in our save and load menu. Now we are ready to paint. Head to the top to the layers panel and scroll down and untick the circle frame and tap to activate a new painting layer in blue. In our brush menu, we're going to select our textured watercolor brush, and in our color studio, we're going to select an orange red color. We're going to create a few strokes using this brush to give the impression of a ribbon wrapping around a transparent glass ornament. Reduce the size of the brush if you want a bit more control over the strokes and I'm going to keep them at a bit of a diagonal and fairly organic. I think I really would like this layer a bit darker. I'm going to open the layers panel and swipe to the left and select duplicate on the layer. Now I can pinch the two layers together to flatten them into one. On the top left, I'm going to tap the magic wand icon, which is the adjustments menu and then tap on the hue saturation and brightness. A new menu will open at the bottom and we're going to use this to intensify the saturation of our red color. I'm going to raise it till mid to high 60s. Just to note here, you can also use the hue slider on the left to adjust the color of your ornament quite easily, have a play if you would like your ornament to be a different color. But for now, I'm going to leave mine on 50% and keep it on red. With the adjustments we have made, we've lost our selection area, but because we have it saved, simply tap to reactivate the selection menu. In the save and load at the bottom, we can choose our selection again. On the right in the layers menu, we're going to select a new painting layer and this time in our color studio, we're going to select the golden yellow color from our palette. On this new layer, we are going to do the same stroke style with our textured watercolor brush, but on the opposite diagonal, as if we are looking through the ornament and the back of the ribbon has a gold color. It's okay to leave a bit of negative space as well. This really adds to the loose aesthetic. Now to deal with those areas of overlap. Undo the selection menu by tapping and then in your layers menu, find the red ribbon layer. Tap to activate it in blue. Then on the left, we're going to re select the selection menu and make sure it's still on automatic selection, and we're going to tap outside of the ribbon until it's blue and drag our stylus on our screen to increase the threshold until any white edges are gone. You can move back and forth until you find the spot you want. Then in the bottom menu, we're going to invert our selection. This will select the areas of red that will overlap on the gold color. I'll just explain why I do this instead of just selecting the ribbon. Because the watercolor brush is semi transparent. If you just select the ribbon, it will only cut out a semi transparent portion. If we invert the selection, it will cut out the whole opaque block where the overlap happens on the yellow ribbon. Now we can head to the Layers panel and tap the yellow ribbon layer to activate it in blue. Then tap on the left on the arrow icon to activate the transform menu and just like we did with our last motif, move the selection off the canvas area to delete the overlap. That way, the two colors won't affect each other. We're going to finish with adding a few gold accents to the ribbon and a gold top and string to our ornament. In your class resources, there's a link to my unsplash collection of royalty free images and textures. Tap the glitter texture. And tap the arrow at the bottom right to download it to your camera once it is in your images on your iPad, we can head back to the Procreate cavas and the wrench icon. Tap the AdTab and then insert a photo. Select the image from your cameral and once inserted with the watercolor texture overlay, it can look a bit dark. I like to head to the top left to the adjustments menu and then select hue saturation and brightness. At the bottom, I'm going to increase the brightness and the saturation. I generally leave the hue by itself, but you can adjust it if you want to increase the intensity of the gold. Tapping your screen while this menu is open will allow you to see the before and after adjustments by tapping preview, and then you can choose whether to apply or reset them. I'm going to apply, and this is going to reset all your sliders at the bottom to 50%. Tap on the layers menu on the right and select the gold ribbon layer. At the top of the menu, tap the plus icon to create a new layer above it, but below the glitter layer. Then tap on the gold glitter layer and in the side menu, select clipping mask. It seems that the glitter layer has disappeared, but rather the clipping mask is going to allow us to see the gold texture on any mark that we make in that empty layer below. Tap on that empty layer and before we begin to make marks, I want to make sure that the gold strokes that we are creating are limited to the area of the ornament. So on the top left in our selection menu, in our save selections, select the circle of the ornament again until it is highlighted in blue. Now, in our brush menu on the right, select your monoline brush and pick a small brush size about 10% and start to add a few gold lines across the red ribbon strokes. Keep your strokes to approximately the center of the ribbon, but they can still be loose and organic. Once you're happy, we're going to create the top of our ornament. Head to our selection menu and tap to activate it. This time, we're going to go to our save and load and we are going to select the area around the ornament. Now on the top right in our brush menu, select the monoline brush at a low setting and we're going to trace out the area of about six squares and hold our stylus on the screen to activate the quick shape tool. Then we can tap at the top to activate the nodes to adjust them and make sure they are symmetrical. Then we can use our monoline brush to fill in the rest of the ornament top and it will reveal all the gold from our glitter layer in those areas. Once that is done, tap on the canvas to set the selection. Next, we're going to create a small ellipse in the center at the top of the ornament and hold it until it activates the quick shape Ellipse tool. We can then tap at the top and adjust and position the nodes as we feel and center them on the top of the ornament. Okay, tap on the canvas again to set the selection, and finally, we are going to create a line for the string of the ornament to the top of the card. In our brush menu, we're going to select the textured watercolor brush and create two ribbon loops at the top of the ornament. This brush adds a really delicate, transparent ribbon aesthetic to the gold that I really love. Head back to the left to the selection menu and in the Save and load menu, activate the selection of the ornament this time, we're going to fill in the jagged rim of the gold at the top. And that is our second design done. Head to the wrench icon and deactivate your drawing guide and take a look at your finished painting. Like we did in the last lesson, head to your layers panel and select all the layers by swiping to the right until they are blue, and then select group at the top to place them into one group. We're going to tap on the new group and in the side menu, rename the group ornament. Swipe to the left on the group and select duplicate to copy the group and untick the bottom group on the right, and then tap the top group, and in the sign menu, select flatten to make it a single layer. That's it for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to complete our final design. 7. The Christmas Tree Pt 1: In this lesson, we are going to create a simple Christmas tree card in a minimalist style. In the layers panel, unlock the flattened Christmas ornament design, scroll down and tick the triangle frame layer on the right, and tap to activate a new painting layer in blue. On the top left, use the wrench icon and the Canvas tab to reactivate the two D drawing guide layer. On the right in the color studio, select green from the color palette and in the brush menu, scroll down and select the textured watercolor brush and set the brush size using the slider. Mine is about 25%. Use the triangle as a guide and starting at the point, we're going to create a ribbon like stroke down the frame from left to right, like a watercolor Christmas tree ribbon. Try and create a consistent pressure with your stroke without leaving your canvas and weave about eight strokes all the way down the triangle. It's okay if it takes a couple of tries to get it how you want it, but try to make sure that the stroke starts and ends on the same side of the triangle guide. Otherwise, it can look a bit lopsided visually. Once you're done, head back to the layers panel and duplicate the layer by swiping to the left and selecting duplicate. Pinch the layers together into one layer and then at the bottom, we can disable our triangle guide. Now we can add a few details to our tree to make sure that we don't go outside of the lines, we're going to go to the top left and tap the ribbon icon to activate the selection menu. At the bottom menu, choose automatic selection and the ad function should be activated in blue. Tap your stylus outside of the stroke you have placed until it turns blue and you can scroll right on the canvas to increase the selection threshold. Then use the save and load menu to save this area to our selections. At the bottom, select invert to select the area of your brush stroke in blue, and then in the save and load menu, save this area to our saved selections. Now we can head back to the Layers panel and select a new painting layer. We're going to keep our brush settings and add shading to the tree to give it a three dimensional look. Use your brush to go over every second downward stroke on a diagonal. And we're going to create our strokes carefully as we move down the tree, just darkening those areas that you see on the screen. Take your time and go slowly. Then to tidy up the edges, head to your eraser tool on the top right and select the small watercolor edge brush. Zoom in and you can use this to to tidy the edges. Then in the layers panel, scroll down and swipe on this layer to duplicate it, and then we can pinch the layers together to form one darker layer. Just below it, untick the first Christmas ribbon layer so that we can see our layer we're working on and we can use our eraser tool to tidy up any stray marks that we see on our canvas. With this layer still active in our layers menu, we're going to head to the left and tap to activate our selection menu. Make sure automatic selection is active and then tap outside of our strokes to activate the area in blue at the bottom, tap invert and in the Save and load menu, save the selection. Now we're going to create some highlights on our tree. On the right in the layers panel, scroll down and tap to activate the original ribbon layer. I want to add highlights in the areas of the ribbon that look like they are closest to us. On the left, deselect and reselect the selection menu. This time at the bottom, we're going to be activating free hand. Then with your stylus, we're going to draw a free hand ellipse on the center to the right of the ribbon areas. You can zoom into your canvas as you do this and with each selection, make sure you tap the gray circle to enclose it. We're going to work our way down the tree, creating these ellipses on all of the lighter areas of the ribbon. Once you're done at the bottom, tap feather and increase the slider to about 12% to blur the watercolor edges of our selection so that we don't have harsh lines where we make our color adjustments. Next, head up to the adjustments menu at the top and tap to open, and then select the hue saturation and brightness menu. Using the sliders at the bottom of the screen, increase the brightness to about 57%, adjust the hue towards yellow to about 47, and increase the saturation to about 62%. And as a result of brightening the center, this is going to make it look like there is light bouncing off the ribbon coming from the right hand side. We're going to repeat this technique with the other painted shadow layer. In your layers panel on the right, tap to select the layer in blue and then using the selection menu and our freehand selection tool, we can zoom in and create ellipses on each of the darkened ribbon layers. Each time, make sure to tap the gray circle to close the selection. Once you're done at the bottom, tap feather and feather out the selection to about 12% to blow the edges, and then at the top left, activate the adjustments menu and the hue saturation and brightness sliders. Again, we're going to increase the brightness to about 63%, the hue to about 48, and the saturation to about 62% to give a slightly golden highlight. Now we can tap on our Canvas and in the pop up menu, select apply. Deselect our selection menu and then on the right in our layers panel, scroll down and swipe to the right to make sure that all of our painted layers for our tree are highlighted in blue. Then head to the arrow at the top left and tap to activate the transform menu. At the bottom, make sure you have your snapping panel activated to assist in resizing while still ensuring our Christmas tree is centered on the canvas. At the bottom menu, we're going to select uniform to maintain our aspect ratio, and then use our stylus to adjust the nodes to make sure the tree is smaller and centered on the canvas. Keep moving it until you see the yellow line cross hairs in the canvas to show it is in the middle. Finally, head to the right to our layers panel and scroll down to the original painted Christmas tree layer and tap to highlighted in blue. And then head to your selection menu. Make sure that automatic selection is selected and tap outside of the area of the Christmas tree. Because we resized it, we have to create a new save selection for our tree. Tap invert and then in your save and load menu, add this new selection to our saved selections. While we're here, we can delete the other selections for the tree that we no longer need, and that's it for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to add a gold stand and Christmas tree ornaments to our tree. 8. The Christmas Tree Pt 2: In this lesson, we are going to create our gold stand, the star at the top, and the ornaments for our Christmas tree. At the top left, head to the wrench icon and tap to open. Select the Ad tab and then insert a photo to place our gold glitter texture we used in the previous lesson. Use the green node to rotate the texture and resize and center it on your canvas. We can also make this layer a bit brighter by heading to the adjustments menu, tapping hue, saturation and brightness. Then at the bottom menu, increase the brightness to about 61%. The saturation to about 56% and the hue to 51%. That will let us see the glitter more effectively. On the right in the layers panel, tap the painted watercolor layer with the shadows and then use the plus icon at the top to create a new layer above it. Then tap on the glitter layer and select the text from the side menu that says clipping mask. Now we can select our empty layer beneath it and tap until it's active and blue. In our brush menu at the top, select your monoline brush and then using the slider, set the size to about 6%. We're going to use our Tu Di grid to help us draw a line down the center of our Christmas tree and hold until the quick shape for our line activates. Then tap line from the quick shape menu at the top and use the nodes in our TD guide to adjust the line until it's centered on the canvas in the middle of our tree. Now, although this stand overlaps the ribbon, we will fix that later. Next, we're going to create an arc on either side of our stand. Plan to have an equal number of boxes on each side of three or four. You can zoom in and then draw the line as a single arc and then hold your stylus on the screen until the quick shape activates. Then you can tap it and make adjustments to the nodes. Remember, you can always use a two finger undo to try again if you don't feel like the arc is positioned properly. Once you're happy, we're going to add a star at the top. On the right, activate the brush menu and this time in the list, select our star brush. We're going to use it to create a stamp on our screen, which does not have to be on top of the stand. Then on the left, head to the selection menu and activate it. In the bottom menu, select the free hand selection tool and then use your stylus to draw a circle around the star and then tap the gray circle to close the selection. Next at the top, activate our transform menu and in the bottom menu, ensure snapping is on, but magnetics is off, and then use your stylus to move your star until it is centered at the top of your stand. Now to deal with the overlap of the ribbon, deactivate your transform menu and then reactivate your selection menu. At the bottom, head to the save and load and select our area of the Christmas tree that we saved. Now we can head back to the right to our layers panel and tap on our clipped layer underneath the glitter. At the top, tap on the eraser tool and select the monoline brush. Adjust the size on your slider and use your stylus to erase the glitter from all the areas where the ribbon is lighter. One by one. Because we have our selection, our erasing will be limited to the area of the ribbon. Work your way down until you get to the bottom and this will now give the impression that the ribbon is wrapped around the stand. Now we can tap the selection menu to deactivate it and we're going to create some Christmas ornaments for our tree. In the layers panel on the right, activate a new painting layer above the glitter layer and then in your color palette, select a pink color for the ornaments. In the brush menu, select the solid circle brush and use the slider on the right to set it at about 5%. We're just going to tap to create little circles to represent where the ornaments are coming off the tree. Just think about the placement and try to have the ornaments balanced as you move down the tree and also below the ribbon so that we can attach lines later. On the top left, activate the selection menu, and at the bottom, choose automatic selection. Tap on your Canvas to select outside of the ornaments, and then at the bottom, tap on invert to select the ornament areas. Then we can use the save and load menu to add this area to our saved selections. Head to the right to the layers panel and select a new layer above the ornaments. In your brush menu, select the textured watercolor brush, and then in your color studio a red color from the color palette. We're going to use our brush to create a simple curved shadow stroke on the left hand side of each ornament one by one as we move down the tree. Because our selection is there, the stroke will not go outside of the circles. Once that's done on the left, select the adjustments menu and this time select Gaussian Blur. Place your stylus on the screen and slide it to the right until the top text shows 5% of blur being applied. Next, we're going to add a little highlight to our ornaments. On the right hand side, open the layers menu and create a new layer using the plus icon at the top. On this new layer, tap on the N on the right to open the Blend Mode menu and select the add Blend Mode. This blend mode is going to add a real luminance as if light is bouncing off those ornaments. Next, we're going to head to the brush menu and we're going to select the flare brush and use our slider to set it at approximately 4%. In the color studio, select a golden yellow color from the color palette, and we're going to tap on the right hand side of each of our ornaments one by one to create highlights as if the light is hitting them from the right. Now we can head to our adjustments menu on the left, and again, select Gaussian Blur and drag your stylus on the screen to blur that highlight to about 5%. Long press on the selection menu to reactivate the bottom menu. Then select Invert to select the areas around our ornament and add this to the save and load selection menu. Now that we've set our selection, head over to the layers panel and select a new painting layer to create lines connecting the ornaments to the tree. In your brush menu, select a small watercolor edge brush and set the size to about 10%. In the color studio, select the brown paper color and then begin drawing lines connecting the ornaments to the tree. They will not go into the area of the ornaments as you do this, and we can cut out any overlap with the Christmas tree in a moment. You're done, long press on the selection menu again and at the bottom in the Save and load menu, we're going to select the area of our Christmas tree. At the top, tap to activate our transform menu, and then we can use our stylus to move the selection off the canvas to delete it. Now you can deselect the transform and selections. On the right in the layers, select a new layer, and in the brush menu, select one of the star stamp brushes. In your color studio, select a red color and make a few stamps around your tree. I do like to mix the colors up. Next head back to the color studio and select a golden yellow from the color palette and create a few more stars for some visual interest. Finally, on the right in the layers panel, you can select all of your layers by swiping to the right until they are blue, and then selecting group at the top, then tap on your group and rename it Christmas tree. Swipe to the left to duplicate your group and then untick the bottom group. Tap on the top group, and in the side menu, select flatten so that all your motifs are in one layer, and that is our final design completed. I hope the process of creating these designs has given you a better understanding of how to use the selection menu, the transform menu, and the quick shape tools to simplify your workflow. Join me in the next lesson to talk through the option of adding text to your motifs and exporting them as PNG files to place in a card template for printing. 9. Exporting Your Motifs as PNG files: In this lesson, we are going to talk through adding text and exporting your designs as PNG files for use as card motifs. We'll use the Christmas tree as an example, but the process will apply to all of our motifs. First, tap on the wrench icon at the top left and ensure that in your Canvas tab, your two D drawing guide is disabled. Then head to the right to our layers panel and at the top, I'm going to untick to disable the watercolor texture stack, and you can see that we lose a lot of the depth of color in our painted motif. For now, I'll just reactivate it. We're going to create a single flattened layer to capture that rich texture on our motif without needing that watercolor texture stack. To do this, head to the left to the wrench icon and tap and then select the Ad tab. Scroll down to the text, copy Canvas and tap to make a copy of our Christmas tree with the watercolor texture. Then on the right in the layers panel, scroll to the top and tap on your watercolor texture stack to activate it in blue. Then with three fingers wipe down on your screen to activate the cut and paste menu, select paste. Now in your layers panel, you'll see that you have a single layer with your motif with that rich texture on the one layer. Now we can cut out our Christmas tree motif from the watercolor texture so that we just have our painted motif with a transparent background. Untick this top layer so that the other layers are visible below it and scroll down in the layers panel to our original Christmas tree group. Tap until that group is active in blue, and then use the plus symbol at the top of the menu to create a new layer between your group and the flattened initial motif. Then tap on the flattened layer to activate it in blue. On the left, head over to the selection menu and tap to activate it. At the bottom, make sure automatic and the ad function are on and then use your stylus to tap the canvas outside the motif to select it, as well as any areas within that Christmas tree ribbon to ensure that all of those inner areas are also included in the selection in blue. Once that's done, you can also slide your stylus on your screen towards the right to increase the selection threshold. If you see any white edges on the tips of your watercolor motif and want to cleaner selection. If you go too far, just slide your stylus to the left until you're happy with the threshold. At the bottom menu, select invert to select the motif now, and then we can head back to the right to our color studio. I'm going to select a white color from our palette just so we can see this clearly. Then in our layers panel, tap to activate the blank layer in between the group and our motif in blue. Tap it again to open the side menu and select the text fill layer. This will fill your selection area and make it completely opaque in the shape of our tree. Now we're going to use this to cut out the motif from our top layer. Tap to open the side menu again and this time choose the text select and this will select the area one more time, and then scroll all the way to the top to our flattened tree and texture layer at the top of our layer stack. Tap to select it in blue, and then on your screen, swipe three fingers down and tap cut and paste in the menu and you should have a perfectly cut out Christmas tree motif. We can swipe to the left on the layer below and select the text delete. Then we can long press on the tick on the right of our cutout motif to isolate it and turn all the other layers in our layer stack off. Finally, scroll to the bottom of the layers panel to the background layer and untick it and you can now see what your motif looks like with a transparent background. To export on the left, tap the wrench icon and this time, select the Share tab. Scroll down and select PNG, which will save it with the transparent background to your camole that's it for this lesson. Take some time to go through the lesson and apply the same techniques to turn the other two motifs into PNG files and then join me in the next lesson to use the free version of Canva to create a greeting card out of our motifs. 10. Greeting Card and E-greeting in Canva: H In this lesson, I'm going to give you an overview of how to use Canva to create a physical and digital greeting card that you can send to your family and friends. The first thing to do is head to a web browser and type in Canva. You can also download Canva on your iPad as a standalone app and use it that way. If you've never used Canva before, once you open the website or open the app, you'll be given a few options on how to sign up. Select a sign in method that suits you. Once you've signed in, you will have access to the dashboard in Canva. I'm on the iPad app, but the layout is almost identical on the desktop. To create a design in Canva, you have a few options. You can use the search bar at the top, or tap one of the options under the banner or the purple sign on the left for a more comprehensive list to create a custom size. We are going to use the search bar at the top to create a Christmas card design, type in folded card portrait. Ten by 7 " and a host of premade camera templates will be generated that you can modify. In the free version, any of the templates, fonts or elements that we come across with a yellow crown on the bottom right are pro features that must be paid for. But any of the ones without them are free templates, so we're only going to use those. I'm going to keep it simple and select the create blank option. This layout is ten by 7 ", when it's folded, it will be five by seven inch. Which was the size we created in our template in Procreate. This will open your design in a new window, which is the editor view of Canva. This will have a new interface and new tools for you to be able to edit your designs. At the top, we're going to first rename our design, tap and type in Christmas tree greeting with your keyboard. This means that when we export it, it will be easy to find in our files. On the left, there are three lines in the corner that will open up a sidebar and this will allow you to head back to the initial landing page. By tapping home and give you a list of recent designs on the left. Tapping the X will collapse this side bar. Because this is a folded greeting card, the page on the left is the back and the page on the right is the front. The next thing we want to do is set up guides so we know that our motifs are centered on the card. On the top left, head to the text that says files and tap to open. Scroll down and select settings, and then we're going to tap the text that says add guides. This will bring a new menu up that allows us to be more selective with placing precise guides. On the right, we're going to select custom settings and create four columns with no gap or margin. Then we're going to tap Add guides and this will add and lock the guides at the center of our card and at the middle of each half of the folded card so that we can snap our motifs to these areas. Now to insert RPNGFle. On the left tool bar, select the icon that says uploads. At the top, tap upload files and then photo library and navigate to where your PNG image is saved. Tap to select and in the top right corner, select Add, you can do this with all three of your motifs to add them to your personal Canva element library. Once they're loaded, you will see them in your uploaded files in the area below the images tab. Then you need to tap to insert it into your design. Once it's in, use your finger, mouse or stylus to tap on your motif and move it to the front page on the right hand side until it snaps to the center where the cross hairs are going to align. Note that whenever you move your motif or any element in Canva, you will see a contextual Tobar appear at the top to give you options for editing it. One of these is the border feature. If you do not want text on your card, but just a motif, you can tap the variable lines to select a border and then use the menu to select the weight, the style, and the size. You can also use the color wheel to select a different color from your color menu that appears from the left. Canva will even select colors from your existing motif so that you can make your design more cohesive. Lastly, with borders, you now have the option to round the corners as well in that contextual menu. For now, I'm going to head back and make it no border. Another note here on the iPad, you can use two fingers on the screen to resize by pinching in or expanding or at the bottom, using the slider to increase or decrease your view size. Next to add our text, tap and move your Christmas tree motif down a bit to create some space to add some text to the card at the top. On the left tool bar, find the option that says text and select the option to add a heading. This will insert a dummy text into your design that you can edit. I'm going to use my keyboard to type Merry Christmas. And then press Enter. Then I'm just going to tap to move my text into position above my motif. You can also use the corners of the bounding box to resize your text just like your Christmas tree. Tapping the text will give you that arrow icon to tap and move the text or a rotate option and a contextual menu to edit your text will appear at the top when it is active. The first edit we're going to make is to change our text by tapping the canvas sands to alter it. This will open up a font library on the left and you can refine your selection by tapping the search bar. I'm going to streamline my search by tapping on handwriting first and then adding to my search bar the term Sunday because I want to select the free text that looks a bit festive. Once you find it in the list, you can tap on it and this will automatically change your text. Then you can tap the X to close the menu. At the top in the contextual menu, you can also adjust the size of the font by tapping on the numbers. Tapping the A will let you adjust the color of your font, which will open a color menu. I'm actually going to select the deep green color from our tree. If you tap on the effects in the contextual menu at the top, you can add different styles to your text like a shadow, and you can also adjust features of the effects using the sliders below and even the color of the shadow. I'm going to show you how this works. Tap on the color and a color menu will pop up. I want to select the color of the ornament specifically. I'm going to select the plus icon with the rainbow. Then in the menu that opens the color dropper on the bottom right. A circle is going to appear on your canvas and then you can move it using your stylus, finger or pencil to select the color of the ornament. Then right at the bottom of your screen on the right, you can tap done and this will change your shadow color. If you want a deeper tone on the left, just move the circle in the gradient to adjust the color and then you can tap on your effects menu to close this window. While we're here, an effect that I really enjoy is the curve feature right at the bottom to curve the text around your motif. Just this simple action just makes it a little bit more cohesive. I think I'm going to leave things here for the text. Finally, for a bit of visual interest, you can head to the left and tap our elements tab. In the search bar at the top, we're going to type blur circle into the search bar and enter. Then select the graphics tab below and scroll down until you see an orange blur with no yellow crown on it, and tap to insert it into your design. Move it and center it in front of your tree. In the contextual menu at the top, you can tap on the color and change the color to a yellow in that side menu. Again, back to the contextual menu. Go all the way to the right and tap on the text that says position, which will bring up a new menu on the left. You can use the position menu to move objects backwards and forwards or align them. So if we tap backwards, it will place our gradient behind the Christmas tree, which is what we want. Alternatively, in the layers tab in this menu, you can get a visual thumbnail of your objects and your design and you can just manually select and move a layer up and down. This is really useful if you have a lot of elements that are on the same page. Finally, we're going to reduce the opacity using the transparency icon in the contextual menu and reduce it so that we just have a bit of a golden glow and you can increase or decrease the size of this element with the bounding box two. That's our front design completed. Remember that the background layer for your card can also be edited. You can tap and adjust the color in the contextual menu and make it any color you choose, like black for a bit of drama. But for now, I'm going to use the undo arrows at the top left to go back to white. You may want to keep it minimal if you are printing at home, but otherwise, feel free to select any color that you like. Now for the back page, generally on a greeting card, you have a logo. For this card, we're going to keep it really simple with a few elements. On the left, tap to select the elements tab, and at the top, type in the text envelope and press Enter. Then in the graphics tab, scroll down about three rows and select a free envelope without that yellow crown and insert it. Use the transform arrow icon to position it and in the contextual menu at the top, tap the second color to adjust it to your liking. I'm going to choose a pale green. Resize and center your envelope until you are happy. Head up to the top search bar in the elements again and tap X to clear our selection. This time we're going to tap in the text heart. In the shapes tab that comes up, select the heart icon and insert it and position it on the envelope like a seal. Then in the contextual menu, we can select a new color. I'm going to select rust red for my heart. Finally, we can head to our Christmas tree and tap the text. In the menu right above the text on the right, tap the two sheet icon to duplicate it. Then I'm going to move this text over the envelope just so that we don't have to create a new text. It will keep all of the settings that we had before. Then double tap to select all of your text, and we're going to replace the text with the words handmade with love. Use the handles on the bounding box to position it on the envelope and snap it to our center guide. One final note, if you want to add a standard interior message for several card copies, you can always use the ad page at the bottom to add a new page and then use your text function to add text for the interior of the card. You can also do this with the menu at the top of the page that comes up on the right hand side. When you export, you can print the card double sided, but just make sure to add the text on the right side for the interior so that it's in the right position when you fold. You can always go to the Design tab on the left hand side and see examples of folded cards to get some inspiration. Finally, to export. To download your design, head to the top right and tap Share to export it. Tap Save as at the bottom left and then at the top in file type, tap on the text, which will open up a new menu of options. Select PDF print or PDF standard. Now you can also choose whether you want to flatten the PDF so that all your motifs are on one layer or leave them editable separately. You can add crop marks and bleed and then tap the purple tab to download it to your file storage. From there, you can print double sided to your printer if you have two pages or single sided, if you have only one and cut and fold using your crop and bleed marks, and that is your card complete. You can then tap on the three lines at the top and go home to the main home screen and your card will be saved in your recent designs at the bottom. Now if you are wanting to send your Christmas card as a digital design on social media, you can select an Instagram post square and create a blank copy. In the editor on the side menu, this time select projects and this will bring up your recent designs. Tap on the Christmas card and all of your elements and motifs that you've just created will be imported into this new design. Now you can delete what you don't need by tapping each element and in the menu right above them selecting the trash can. Then tap on your main motif and in the three dots in the immediate menu, scroll down and select the text, select multiple. Then you can select two elements just by tapping the Christmas tree and the text and then right at the top, tap done. This will now give you an option to group them and we can move the Christmas tree and the text together in a group to the center. Snap it to the center guide, and then this time you can resize your motif to whatever size you want, and then you can tap on the gradient for this exercise, we're just going to delete it. Finally, you can add the background color of your choice for a bit of visual interest because this is being sent digitally. We're going to go into our color options and then we're going to select a gradient for this one to make it a bit interesting. I just want to say that in the color tab, you can actually adjust your gradient colors to pick whatever colors you choose. In the contextual menu at the top of your card, we are also going to add a simple page animation. Tap the text animate and then this is going to open up a menu on the left hand side, which will give you some automated animations. For this card, I'm going to select a simple page animation which is brief and just like that, you have re used your handmade elements in two different ways. This is also a great workaround for the free version because you don't have the option of automatically resizing your design, which is a pro feature. Just like before to Export, you can use the Share tab and save as. The default is an MP four video when you have an animation that you can download to your camera roll to share. Well, that's it for this class. I want you to take some time and have a play with the new features that we've gone through in this class and then apply those skills to your other two motifs and make two other greeting cards that you can print out or two other seasonal greetings that you can send to family and friends on social media this holiday season. I really hope this class has inspired you to creatively use Procreate and Canva together more effectively in your creative workflow. Join me in the next lesson for ways to apply your new skills and closing thoughts. 11. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I have really enjoyed walking you through my workflow for creating festive watercolor greeting cards using Procreate and Canva. Don't forget to take a screenshot of one of your designs to upload to the class project section of this class. Seeing your projects really does energize and inspire me. If you're on social media, tag me at Cardwell and Ink and I'll share your work in my stories. The skills you've learned in this class don't stop here. You can use these same techniques to design greeting cards for any occasion or even start a side hustle selling digital cards on print on demand platforms. If you enjoyed this class, be sure to check out my other procreate classes here on Skill Share. I have classes on creating beautiful leaves, wreaths and floral arrangements that pair perfectly with the skills you've just learned. If you have some time, please leave a review. Your feedback helps me to improve and helps other students discover the class. Thanks again for joining me. I hope this class has sparked new ideas and creativity for your holiday season. Keep creating, keep experimenting, and I'll see you in my next class.