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Are you bad with images? Try Canva. And other bits and bobs.

Hi all:

On Tuesdays I bring you…who knows? Whatever comes to my mind, novelties about what I’m doing, things that have happened, reflections, and sometimes I try to bring you something possibly  useful.

A little while back I share with you the video (sort of) that I created (with plenty of help from You Tube) for my new romance, I Love Your Cupcakes.  I’m not an image person at all, and I decided to try and keep it simple. Thankfully, through another post I discovered something called Canva. You’ve probably already heard about it, but just in case…

Canva offers you the option of using their templates to create all kinds of things, from covers for CDs, cards, invitations, Twitter, Pinterest or Facebook posts (so you don’t need to worry about the different sizes of images required), banners, blog posts…

A little bit of everything

Like this one I prepared earlier.

You can change colours, letter sizes and types, upload and use your own images, crop, use filters, etc. They have a fair amount of free resources and quite a large amount of paying ones (it’s $1 per image or paying template or element). Then whatever you make you can download as image or PDF. And it also saves it there.

And the best thing about it is that it offers you a variety of design tutorials where you can learn how to use the different features. And those are short and practical (it gives you 5 or 6 exercises to do that take only a few minutes and you have the option of watching a very brief video if you don’t know how to do it).

Having tried a few of the programmes for manipulating images and being quite clumsy with images, I find this one easy to move around. Do give it a go. I used it to create the slides that I put together in the video (that and images Lourdes Vidal, the designer and I had considered for the cover of the book).

And talking about images, I had promised you to share a few more of the images my friend Christelle took in Florence, as both her camera and her skills are much better than mine.

So here….

Fabulous ceiling
Fabulous ceiling
I had promised the gentlemen a Venus. This is Titian's
I had promised the gentlemen a Venus. This is Titian’s
Street sculpture installation near Ponte Vecchio
Street sculpture installation near Ponte Vecchio
This one I think is so good...
This one I think is so good…

Thanks to you all for reading, to Canva for being, to my friend Christelle for her pictures and…

Thanks Canva!
Thanks Canva!

By olganm

I am a language teacher, writer, bookworm, and collaborator at Sants 3 Ràdio (a local radio station in Barcelona, where I returned in 2018), who lived in the UK for 25 years and worked for many years as a forensic psychiatrist there. I also have a Ph.D. in American Literature and an MSc in Criminology. I started publishing my stories, in English and Spanish, in 2012 and now have over twenty books available in a variety of genres, a blog (in English and Spanish), and translate books for other authors (English-Spanish and vice versa). In 2020 obtained the CELTA certificate as a language teacher, and offer Spanish and English classes. Writers and readers both in English and Spanish are my friends, colleagues, and allies, and after living in the UK for over twenty-five years, have returned home, to Barcelona, Spain, searching for inspiration for my stories. I also love owls and try to keep fit following fitness YouTube videos.
Do feel free to connect with me. Here are:
My website/blog:
http://OlgaNM.wordpress.com

22 replies on “Are you bad with images? Try Canva. And other bits and bobs.”

Thanks so much. I wasn’t sure if the information would be of much use, but as I hadn’t come across until recently I thought somebody else might not have either. My friend is great at taking photos. I just look around in awe!

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Thanks Dena. I tend to go for either their watermarked ones or the free images, but even if you decide to use one of their paid ones is a dollar each (the ones I used in the post were all free). The funny thing is I have tried some expensive programmes and they take so long to learn that I don’t have time to use them. This is pretty straight forward.

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Thanks David! And thanks for the wonderful interview! I’ll pass the comments on to Christelle. I might convince her to have her own blog, although I know she’s a very busy lady! I’m sure you’ll manage Canva. I’ve seen what you can do with your pictures…:)

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Thanks Lorna. I only started using it pretty recently and have so far survived and not thrown the computer out of the window, so it must be pretty easy!

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Thanks Teagan. I know you’re far more skilled with images but in my case it encourages me to try to use images a bit more as it seems pretty straight forward. And Christelle has confirmed she’s happy for me to show as many of her pictures as I like, so I’ll keep finding new jewels…NaNoWriMo is nearly here!

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Thanks so much and I hope it is helpful. I think if you’re skilled you could manage to do great things but I thought most people might find it helpful.

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