How to Make Printables with Canva

Learn how to make printables in Canva with this easy tutorial.

If you are anything like me, you hate spending money on things when you know you can make them yourself. Did you know that you don’t need paid programs like Photoshop or Illustrator to make printables? You can make printables with Canva for free!

Canva is an amazing program that can be used to make many different types of prints and graphics.  Canva has a paid version and a free version.  Everything I’m going to teach you today is included in the free version.

HOW TO MAKE PRINTABLES WITH CANVA

The easiest way to make printables with Canva is to use the premade templates. Templates make designing easy because everything is already laid out for you.  All you have to do is customize the design to your liking.

First, create an account with Canva.  When you have your account set up, click on Create Design and then choose a template. Scroll through the templates and choose one that you like.

For this example, I’m choosing a label template. The steps to customizing each template are the same so this tutorial will work with any template you choose in Canva. Click on the template, click “use template” and it will load onto your canvas. If at any time you want to change templates, just click the one you want on the left-hand side to change templates.

CUSTOMIZING YOUR PRINTABLE

You can change pretty much anything that you want on the template. To change an element, just click on it and options will appear at the top letting you know what you can change.  This is what my screen looked like when I clicked on the text.  At the top, you can see that you can see options to change the font, size, and color. 

You may notice that there are hatch marks on top of the background pattern. This means that the background pattern is not free.  WOMP WOMP.  You can either pay to use it, change the color of the background or upload your own design to use as the background.

To change the color, simply delete the current background by clicking and deleting. Then click the color wheel in the upper left to change the color. You can either choose a color or enter a hex code and choose from different color palettes.

To upload a new background, find a background design that you like and save it to your computer.  Make sure whatever design you choose, you read the designer’s terms of use. Click upload in the upper left and navigate to where you saved the file. Click on the file to upload it and then click it again to add it to your label. Canva also has free backgrounds under the “background” section. Just click the one you want to use.

MORE PRINTABLE TUTORIALS

• How to make printables in Photoshop Elements
• How to make printables in Photoshop
• How to make printables in Illustrator
• How to make printables in PicMonkey

SAVING YOUR PRINTABLE

When you are satisfied with your printable, the final step is saving.  To save, click “download” and save your file as a JPEG or PDF. If you choose the PDF option, you can add crop marks and bleed to your final document so you get a perfect cut every time.

CAN YOU SELL CANVA DESIGNS ON ETSY

I have not sold any designs made from Canva templates on Etsy. Most of the designs that I have for sale have been made from scratch (not from a template) in programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator.  Here is what Canva has to say about selling items made from their templates:

“Here at Canva, we create our own templates or layouts for our customers. However, we also welcome people who’d like to create and sell their own Canva-made designs as third party templates outside our platform.

Please note that we don’t allow you to resell Canva-made templates. Some people have been getting confused about this. Changing the content of the template, without completely changing the design, isn’t creating your own work and obviously we can’t permit you to sell them.”

LOVE IT? PIN IT!