Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this
class on designing and making your own notepad using
Canva. My name is Karen. I'm a designer and maker and I've been involved
in all things craft, eat for as long as
I can remember. My guilty secret is
that I love stationary. In fact, I heard stationary. There are notepads
or notebooks on diaries and planners
all over this house. I don't think anyone actually
knows how many I have. Over the years. I've gone into making
my own notepads. It's very, very simple today. I give them as gifts. I sell them on Etsy. I thought it would make a
great class to share that with other people so that they could also give personalized gifts, perhaps even open their
own stationery shop. In this class, I'm going
to show you how to use the online tool Canva to personalize a notepad with fonts and graphics that
make it personal to you. At the end of the class, you'll have your own notepad and I'd really love
it if you would upload your project to the
class project gallery. I'll be giving feedback on all of the projects
that are uploaded. And I'd encourage you to look at other students projects as well and to give them feedback. In the next lesson, I'm
going to talk you through the project and a
little bit more detail. Let's get going.
2. Class Project: In this lesson, we're
going to look at the class project and
a bit more detail. The class project,
you're going to make a simple shopping
list note pad. You will be using
the online tool Canva to design
your shopping list, adding graphics and fonts to personalize the design
however you wish. Once you are happy
with your design, you will be exporting
it to your computer. And from there it
can be printed. You'll be printing
night I ever number of pages you wish to
have in your notepad. Typically there are around 40. Once the pH is roll printed, I'll be showing you how
to cut and assemble your notepad and also how to
add an optional front cover. As a little bonus at the end, I will show you a couple
of different ways that I package my notepads to
either gift or sale. In the next lesson, we're going to look
at the materials required. So let's get going.
3. Tools & Materials: There are a few tools and
materials that you're going to need to complete the
notepad in this class. The first one isn't a kind
on the online tool Canva. When you go to canva.com, you will see down
at the bottom here, they have a number of options. Canva free, Canva Pro, which is the paid
subscription I mentioned. And also comes with proteins. If you work with a number
of people and you all want to be working on
the same projects. But for now, all we
need is Canva free. So if you click on Canva free, you can then choose how
you want to sign up. I'll just followed
the procedure three, to create your account. Once you've not done, you'd be all ready
to start designing. The next thing that you're
going to need is a printer. I use an Epson AT 27, 50, but any printer
will be fine. You know your own printer and you'll know the
printer settings. So I'm not going to give
you any advice about print settings
because to be honest, I'm not an expert in printers. I know they can be temperamental and you're probably know your own better
than anyone else. But you will need a
printer of some kind. The next thing we're going
to be using is paper. I use normal copy
paper, nothing special. You can also use recycled paper, colored paper,
whatever you prefer. For putting our
notepad together, we're going to use PVA glue
or bookbinding medium. Big finding medium is
a bit more flexible, but PVA glue is absolutely
fine for this project. You will also need a paintbrush for the backing for a note bond. We're going to use gray
board or cardboard. I tend to use gray board
because it's a little bit thicker than normal cardboard that you would find
around the house. But the back of a cereal pocket
or some packaging board, anything like that will be good. It's just something to
give it a little bit of a firmness to the background. You'll need some
binder clips to hold the pHs of your notepad firmly together while
the glue dries. You'll also need scissors
or a paper trimmer to cut the printed sheets into the right number of
pages for our Notepad. If you'd like to put an optional front cover on your notepad. It also needs some
powdered paper. You'll probably want
something a little bit thicker than wrapping paper. But scrapbook
paper, craft paper, anything like that
would be great. I'll also be providing you with a PDF version of the design
I used for my Notepad. If you'd like to use this, you can download it
from the projects and resources tab in the
class description. In the next class, you're going to be using
the account you created on Canva to design your notepad.
4. Getting started with Canva: In this lesson,
we're just going to have a quick look up
getting started with Canva so that you
know where all of the elements are before we actually start
designing our notepad. When you login to Canvas, you will see along the
top that there are different options for
templates that are provided. There are templates for
Whiteboards, for presentations, social media posts, videos, print products,
websites, on more. If you go into any
one of these, e.g. if we go into social media, you can then choose what kind of social media posts
you're looking for. An Instagram post
or Facebook post. Instagram story. In Scrum rail TikTok videos, there are lots of
different options. You can see a bit more detail of these further down the screen. You can also see some of the templates that
are available. If you click on
any one of these, you'll be able to go
in and personalize. It changed some of the elements. E.g. if I were to go into, let's say I go into this
one for an online class. It's made up of a font. Another font, couple more down at the bottom,
and then image. So I'll be able to go in here, change the font by just choosing a different font
from the fault list. Like this. And you could change the image if you'd had another
image you prefer to use. Some images will allow
you to change the colors. So e.g. in this one, if I decided I wanted to
change the mustard color, I can go up, click on that color and change
it to something else. There are lots of
options there with the ready-made
templates that you can alter them to
your own needs. But I think it's good to
learn how to design our own. So that's why for our class, we will actually be creating
our template from scratch. For our notepad class, we will be using one of the available tab hits
will be creating our own. So we'll be going
to create a design and then we'll be setting
up a custom size. But if you'd like to get to know Canva bit more prior
to the next lesson. Before we start designing, I suggest that you just
choose an A4 document. Then you can have a good look through the available elements. I'll give you an idea
of things you might want to include on your notepad. You can have a look at the
fonts that are available. They will also give
you some suggestions of font pairings that
work well together. You might want to use those. You might want to use photos, not probably not in
the notepad class, but maybe in other designs
that you might wish to do, you might want to
use some photos. And that will give
you a chance to have a good look through there
and see what's available. I just want to let you
know that when you do choose an element that you
might be looking for, e.g. a. Shopping trolley that you might want to include
on your note pads. You will see that some elements have this
little gold crime. They say pro. Those are elements
that are available for free if you have a
paid subscription. So I don't really use those. I tend to stick to the ones that are don't have that,
that'll crime. They are all free. If you'd like to have a
good play around and having an explore and
Kansas seeing what's available and what
you might want to include it in your note pads. And then in the next class, we'll get designing.
I'll see you there.
5. Designing the Notepad: So now we're ready to create
our own design in Canva. We're going to go up to the
top right and we're going to choose, Create a design. We're not going to choose one of the ready-made templates. We're actually going to choose custom size so that we
can put in our own sizes. So if we just click
on Custom Size, I know that I'm going to use an A4 page and I know the
measurements of an A4 page. I want to use my pH in a
landscape orientation. So I have to put in
my measurements, bearing in mind that
the longer side is going to be the width and the shortest side is
going to be the height. I might have to choose the units of measurement
that I wish to use. We're going to use millimeters. So if we choose millimeters, I know that an A4 page is 297 mm across in landscape
orientation and 210 mm high. On. Then I'll just choose
create a new design. And it will bring
up, alright, for pH, ready for us to add
our elements to it. With our Notepad, we
will be able to get three notepad pitches
out of one A4 page. And we'll do that by
splitting it up into three equal sized sections. The way I ensure that I get equal-sized sections is to
create the first section, to do all my design in that, and then to duplicate
it two more times. So I set up a little template within
this page for myself, a little box that I designed
and I go to elements. And I will choose a box. And I will bring it
up to the top right, top left of the page. And I will extend that
to get the right size. You can see that there's a little black box
with changing numbers. And as I re-size the bulks that I'm going to design
in the numbers change, and it's telling me the width
and the height of the box. I knew that I want this box
to be a third of the A4 page. On a third of 297 is 99. So I am looking for the
width of this box to be 99 and the height
to be two tan. So I'm gonna go, you
can see it changing. I've gone over some
too big there, so I'm going to
have to come died. It can be a little bit fiddly sometimes just to get that old. So there we go. Width 99, height to tan. That group for
anything she inches. So this is the box
that I'm going to design my notepad sheet and then I will duplicate my design two more times to fill the page. I don't want to
design in a blue box. I want to design and
just a white box, but I want the box to
be clearly defined. I'm going to go up to change
the color of the box. I don't want any color in it, so I'm going to choose
the new color option. I do, however, want
to see the outline. So I'm going to go
in to the border. I'm going to give
it a width of one. I just want a thin line. A solid line will be fine, but I want to change the color. I want it to be a very, very light gray, so I
can just see it no more. Now that we have our box showing us the area that we
want to design in. We can choose what fonts and graphics that we want
to add to your design. The first thing I want to add is words at the top
that say shopping list. If you were giving it as a gift, you might want to put
someone's name on there to make it
personalized to them. E.g. current shopping list. Or you might not. I'm not
going to put my name on it. I'm just going to leave it
as saying shoppingList. And I want to find
a font that I like. Now I come to has
given us some options of and font pairings
that go well together. You can see them doing
the left-hand side. Any that have, as I
mentioned before, little crime, let's say Pro they are
the paid subscription. So if we avoid those unjust, you use the ones
that have new crime. They're free. This is one of my favorite. I use it quite a lot, but sometimes I change
elements of it. Or you can just choose to
add a font from scratch. So if we choose out a heading, it will bring it up over here and we can move it up
to where we want it to be. Ticket tie in to the right size. Double-click to select it all. And change your font. Again, any that have the crying or in the
paid subscription. But there are many, many free
ones there to choose from. And it also will show you some
that you've recently used, which is useful if you have some favorites that you
use again and again, It's the issue from going down the whole list, finding them. I am going to go down to
one I like quite a lot. If I can find it in the list. There we go. It's called Jonathan. And I quite like that style. So I'm going to add the
word shopping list, just make them a
little bit bigger. I quite like that. But I think I would like the
words in different forms. So I'm going to
take the word list. I want to leave shopping in this font up to the
top a little bit. But I would like
the word list in a, in a different style. So I'm going to go in and
choose to add a subheading. I'm going to do the
work and estimate. I would like it to
be in capitals. I'm just going to resize it. You can re-size by either
dragging the box up and die, or you can use the
plus or minus i arrows up beside the fonts. You can also change the
color of the font and you can make it bold,
italic, underline. You can add some effects
if you'd like to add drop shadows or backgrounds
to them, you can do that. You can really play around
with lots of different options here until you get it
looking as you would like. I would just like mine
to be nice and simple. I wanted to say shopping
list just in black, but I want the list to fit in-between the tail of the
P and the tail of the G. So mine is just like
this shopping list. I think that works quite nicely. I would like to add a graphic. I would like to add a
shopping trolley up here in the right-hand side. So I am going to go in, again into my elements and I am going to search
for a shopping trolley. And it's showing me different trolleys that are available. Again, the ones with the
crime are approved ones. So avoid those and we'll
just stick to the free ones. I quite like, I
quite like this one. So I'm going to choose
that far too big. So I'm going to I'm bringing up here to go Besides shopping list and
I'll just re-size that. I get it where I want. I want it to be just
a rotten same height as the the title shopping list. So I'm quite happy with that. I would like them to be
more centered in the page. So I'm going to select three
items by clicking on one, holding down my shift key. Clicking on the next one, keeping the Shift key down and
clicking on the third one. Then I will go over
and choose grip because this is what
I, I like this design. I like the word shopping, that's not like the trolley
where it is. I don't want to be
moving something and find out that I've messed up my design and they're not in
the right gripping anymore. So if I grip them, that keeps them
together and I can move them and they
all move as one. I can re-size. I can move them over it. So I'm going to just move them to wear I think
is the center. If I wanted to check, I can
go over here to where it says Position and choose, center. And it's going to
take me to the center of the page. I didn't want that. So I will Control
Z to undo that. I want it to center
it in this box. I would have to choose
the box as well. So I would have to
choose the box. On the shopping list,
trolley gripping. Dan, I can choose
position center. I'm I'm quite lucky there. I already I'm centered. If I if I wasn't, if that was showing up
as available to click on Undo select that, it will center them for you. So now I have my title. Shopping lists, have
a little graphic. I might want to add some lines, join the page to write the
items of shopping Home. I do this by going to elements
and choosing a normal, clean line from
lines and shapes. This brought up in the
center of the page for me. I bring it over to what roughly where I
want the top line to be. And I resize it. And I tend to do these by eye, but you can select it, select the box and center to make sure
it's in the center. And I'm quite happy
as long as I've got it looking centered
to me that it's okay. It's far too dark. I don't want it that thick and heavy and I probably
don't want to block. I think I'd like it in
a dark shade of gray. So I'm going to go up and
just change the line. I do want it to be
a straight line. I don't. You could also
choose dashed or dotted. I do want a solid line, but it's too heavy, so I only
want it to be probably one. The line weight to be one. So I will do that and you can see that has made
the life thinner. But I also don't
want it in black. So I will go to line color. I will just choose a darkish, well, maybe actually
quite a whitish gray. And see what I
think they're just click off your design
and you can have a look. So now I have a line
that I'm happy with, and I'd like to have
this line repeated way to the bottom
of the page so that I have lots of lines to
write my shopping list on. Canva offers a neat little trick to make this so much simpler. If we go to the line that
we've already put down. You can see that box of
options comes up above. You have the option
to send it to them. I'm not going to do that
because I'm happy with it. Or you have the option
to duplicate it. If you select Duplicate, you can see that another line
is brought up underneath. Never brings the first one
up in the right position. But if you reposition it, what you want it to go. So we want it a reasonable distance away so that there's room to write between the lines. And we want them to be
in line at each end, you can see the little
purple dotted lines are showing me that
they are in line. I'm pretty happy with
that positioning. I'm going to let go. You can. And then I'm going to click off. Because I find that this is
the easiest way to do this. Then go back to that lime. Got to look at tonight
on your second line. A third one comes up
already in place. And if I continue to do duplicate the whole
way down the page, each new line is brought up
in line with the one above, so that I end up with a whole page of lines that
are already in possession. Their lines up at both ends
centered in the middle. And that makes life a lot
easier than having to add h line manually. So when you get to the
bottom of the page, I think that's as far
as I wanted to go. You've got your shopping list. If you wish, you could
add another level imaged on the bottom
or some text. But I'm happy with my
shopping list as it is. The next thing I want to do is to group all
of this design together so that
it's easy for me to duplicate it two more
times to fill the page. The easiest way to do this
is to click off the screen, go slightly outside
the boundary, and just drag a rectangle
around all of the elements. And then choose grip. Now I know that I am gripping
the binding box as well. And this, which I don't
necessarily need for my notepad. But actually sometimes I find that it makes it a
bit easier for cutting. If you have a paper trimmer
that it's hard to get an a precise measurement
all like mine. It can be handy to
have that very, very faint gray line there so
that you know where to cut. And when you cut
exactly on the line, you don't see it
in the note pad. So it is fine. If you want to at the end, you can remove that line so
it's not in your final page. But then you will have to be
very careful about cutting. You may have to measure
to make sure that you get your pH is equal size. So I want to take this design. I wanted you to bucket
the whole design. So I can just go to duplicate. And it's brought
up another design which I am going to move over and put exactly on the
line of the previous one. And I am then going
to duplicate this. Again. I don't know why
it doesn't let me duplicate option
doesn't come up again. So I just do Control C and Control V to copy and paste
and bring up the third one. You can see that we have
three note Pont designs. Three notepad page
is filling the page. You can see the gray line, either separation
between the sheets, if you want to remove
them at this stage, the way to do that
is to collect. Click on your
design on Griffith. Go to the bounding box. You can just delete that. And it's gone. You would have
to do it with the next one. The first one as well, to get rid of them all, I'm quite happy to leave mine. So I'm just going to do that. The next thing we
want to do is to get our shopping list from
Canva onto our computer. The way we do that by
going to share, download. And then we choose
our file type. For this, I'm chasing a PDF. And I'm choosing the
one that says it's best for printing on, then I'm going to choose mood. And it will ask me where I would bring up a
PDF and that will bring up a PDF on my computer showing
three shopping lists. And I will then save that to my computer at wherever
I want to put us. So I'm just going
to leave it in my dynamos folder at the moment. But you can obviously
save it to wherever you have your documents
on your computer. In the next lesson, I'm
going to show you how to go from this file which we've
downloaded to printing ite, the required number of pages
for your notepads on to cutting and assembling those
and gluing them together. I'll see you in the next lesson.
6. Printing & Assembling: Now that we have all
our notepad pages printed, we're
going to cut them. You need to line them
up very carefully in your tremor or using scissors, be very careful to cut
along the gray line. You want to make
sure you go along the gray line the whole way. Because then once you have
it cut, it won't be visible. Once you've got all
your pH is cut, we're going to cut the
cardboard for the backing. Again, line it up in your
cutter or using your scissors, real align length 9
mm wide to tan high. And that will be the backing. You can see that I've cut three pieces in mind just
to have some for later. The common A4 sheets, the grape word that I use. So it's very easy
just to cut three, and I always have some
extras and a drawer. Once you have your gray
board on your pages, we want to line them
up very carefully, making sure they're
equal at the top, the bottom on both sides. We don't want any pH is sticking out at the top or
bottom or side. So that's just take some time to make sure that they're all
even the whole way right? When I'm getting ready
to glue my notepads, I use little scraps
of cardboard and I put them behind and
in front at the top. And this helps protect the
pHs from the indentations of the binder clips
that I use to keep them together firmly
while the glue dries. Um, I also have a couple
of spare pages at the top so that I can rip off any dots and get Glee
on them accidentally. Once you have your pages
on your keyboard or your cardboard held together firmly by the binder clips,
you're ready to glue. As I've said before, I
use bookbinding medium, but PVA glue is
absolutely fine for this. Just get some on
a paintbrush and do a lovely even
coat along the top, making sure that you get it on both the card boards
or gray board. And on your pages, you want to make sure
they're haven't even coating across all of them
and there are no gaps. Then I add an extra two
binder clips to the top of my notepad just to make sure that those pHs are
held together really, really well while they dry. Just be sure that when you are putting the binder
clips on the top, you do not get the top of the binder clip touching
the glue at all. That can completely written a
note pad at the last stage. So we just want to
make sure that they're not too close and
they're not touching, then we just leave it to dry. I usually leave mine overnight, but probably three or 4
h is the time it off. Once the glue has dried and you take the
binder clips off, you have a lovely note pad
that you can use yourself, give us a gift or selling
your stationery store, you may want to add optional
front cover to your notepad. I tend to use some
scrapbooking paper that I would have in
the house and my boat. Vast collection of that. So they usually have
some available. And you just want
to make sure that you measure your
front cover paper to be about three to 4 cm longer
than the notepad itself. And this allows
it to go over the top and glue on to the back. So now you have finished
your class project. You have a notepad either with or without the
optional front cover, and you are ready to get to
making your shopping list. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you just a couple of ideas that you might want to use for packaging your notepads.
7. Packaging: Now that you've
finished your notepad, I just want to show you a few of the ways that I
package might note pads to give as gifts or to
sell in my online store. I used three main ways. The first way is to
just pop the notepad into three syllable
cellophane bag. That keeps the notepad nice and clean and stops the pH
is getting dog-eared. The second option is to make a simple route to go around
the front of the notepad. I often print these
on craft card to give a contrast with the white
paper of the notepad, you can print a
label that goes on the front saying
whatever you like. The third way is I like
to wrap twine around my notepad and have a little tag hanging off it with
my business card. So those are just some simple ideas that you might like to use to package your notepads. As a little bonus, if you
go to the Projects and Resources tab down below, you'll find a PDF version of my notepad ramps that
you might like to use.
8. Conclusion: So now you've come to
the end of the class. I hope you're happy
with your notepad and that you've learned some
skills along the way that you didn't have before
and that you'll be able to use in future to create more beautiful note
pods that you can give as gifts are opened your own
stationery shop with. I'd love you to upload
your projects into the class project
gallery so that I can give you some feedback and see the lovely
things you've made. And also so that you can have a look at what other
students have done. They can have a look
at yours and that you can give each other feedback and comments to encourage you going forward in your notepad
designing journey. If you show your pods
on social media, I'd really love
it if you tag me, my occurrence or reckless, reckless and designs
on Instagram. If you follow me on Skillshare, you'll get notified when
I publish a new class, and I've lots of plans to publish new classes
over the new year. Thanks so much for
joining me in this class. I really hope that
you'll join me in some of my new classes in 2023.
Karen Vincent, Inspired by Handmade
