The Beauty Pro's Guide To Canva

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to be both business-minded and creative. I've been passionate about design since the beginning days of my business- and I love the freedom to be completely in control of my business' aesthetic (and tbh, I love just sitting and playing around with different styles and fonts). Creating my own designs has been huge for building my brand- and the way I've been able to establish my own branding without having to hire out a graphic designer is through Canva. While I do use a GD for big projects, I love Canva because I can easily create on the fly and right when I need it. 

Canva is an amazing graphic design platform that allows me to create my own graphics, website, newsletters, etc. They also offer incredibly simple drag and drop, fully editable templates to make it even easier when I have no clue what I want to create. Below are a few ways I use it & tips for getting started. 

I use Canva to create everything from logos & business cards to blog posts and reels covers. There are so many pre-designed templates that you can type in a style and a ton will pop up. For example, search pink IG graphic and you’ll get several that you can scroll through. 

You can heart the ones you like and they will get added to your home page. From here I go on and drag and drop/move text, change colors & add pictures to design how I want. If design is not your thing-they are ready to go as is. I recommend starting with templates until you feel more confident completely customizing them. 

Things to think about so it’s not totally overwhelming: 

1. Have a plan & know your style - First, you need to find your aesthetic so you’re not making graphics that are all over the place. I created a reel that breaks down how to do this here.

2. Decide what you need to create - I typically do this at the beginning of my week. Example: I need one blog post, one newsletter graphic, one podcast episode for IG stories and a few others I sprinkle in there. The great thing about Canva (if you have the pro one) is you can create and resize the same graphic to make it it for different platforms. So, if I need a blog post for my feed and also my stories I just quickly hit “resize” and I now have two! (Don’t forget to save the first one before resizing) 

3. Don’t create on the fly unless it’s for fun - The pressure to perform is too much to bare. Create and save for later! There will be times when you are two cups of coffee deep and it’s not even 9 and you’re in your groove-go girl! It should be fun. If it’s not-you’ll burn out. 

4. Reuse - Do not be afraid to recycle your graphics. People need to see things a few times before it sticks so share it more than once. 

5. Go pro - The pro account is WORTH IT. There are tons of stock photos you can use, a background remover (for collages) and the resize option. 

If you can’t tell I’m pretty obsessed with Canva. You can sign up here using an affiliate link I have (this is not a paid blog- just me hyping up one of my favorite tools) or we can create magic together via zoom here if you feel like you can’t go at it alone! 

 xx