Let’s take a FREE Canva class together on March 23rd!

The image shows a collection of images Chelly Wood has used to create thumbnails, ads, and videos, using Canva. There are images of sewing machines, sewing tools, patterns, organizers, and photos with the Chelly Wood dot com logo, plus more...
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Have you ever wondered how I create my thumbnails, colorful blog images, and business logos? I use a type of software that’s available to everyone who has internet access, and the software is actually free: Canva!

Today’s blog post is a simple announcement with a helpful tip for those of you out there who are small-business owners, making doll clothes and selling them online.

Or maybe you just want to learn how to make Instagram posts that look pretty with little animations and graphics.

Or maybe you’d like to design a business logo to attach as a watermark on your doll clothes photos.

Or maybe you want to learn how to add graphics to your own website.

Or maybe you also design doll clothes patterns, but you want to know how to make them into a PDF quickly and easily.

Here we see a Breyer Rider and a Mego female Piper (from Charmed) action figure wearing the same blue and white plaid long sleeved shirt with cuffs and a collar over a pair of dark denim blue elastic waist jeans with boot cut legs. These two photos are just part of the images found on this free printable PDF sewing pattern for making the outfit itself. The pattern includes a shirt front, a shirt back, a pants pattern, a collar pattern, a sleeve pattern, a jeans pocket pattern, and a cuff pattern, as well as a measurement tool (to make sure your printer prints the PDF pattern correctly) and a Creative Commons Attribution mark (along with the Chelly Wood logo). The title at the top of the pattern says, "8 inch doll western clothes sewing pattern."
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

This list of possibilities could go on, but I want to keep today’s blog post short and sweet. So here’s the thing…

Yes, there’s a paid version of Canva (which I use), but there’s a lot you can do with the free version of Canva to make your business look sharp online.

If you’ve ever seen one of my older tutorial videos, you’ve probably run across the thumbnails and graphics I used before I was introduced to Canva. They looked like this:

Header showing Ken doll in Renaissance Doublet
Visit ChellyWood.com to see video and download free pattern.

Now compare that to the graphics I’m creating in Canva today:

The graphic shows an 18 inch doll lifting up a tiny 8 inch doll, and the American Girl doll uses a speech bubble to say "YAY!" while confetti jumps around the speech bubble joyfully. In the photo of the two dolls, each wears a matching pair of green overalls and a white tee-shirt, so the 18 inch American Girl doll's outfit matches the 8 inch vintage Vogue Ginny doll's outfit. Beside these images is a computer screen with the overlapping text "new" and "course" is written beneath the computer screen. The Chelly Wood dot com logo appears in the lower left corner, and the URL for finding the course on the Creative Spark online learning platform appears at the top of the image.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Let me show you, again, the graphic I posted at the top of this page. All of the images in this showcase were created using Canva, including my new Chelly Wood business logo.

And there’s so much more!

The image shows a collection of images Chelly Wood has used to create thumbnails, ads, and videos, using Canva. There are images of sewing machines, sewing tools, patterns, organizers, and photos with the Chelly Wood dot com logo, plus more...
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

If you’d like to learn how I build my graphics, consider taking this class along with me, on March 23rd.

Now let me be clear… I’m not teaching this class; I’ll be TAKING this class. And today’s blog post is not a paid promotion, I’m just sharing the love.

The image, which is purely decorative, shows a heart-shaped pincushion with needles and pins in it. Beside this are two spools of thread.
Purchased from iClipart — all rights reserved.

Canva was introduced to me by my oldest daughter, Emily Teapot, who just finished a marketing degree at Idaho State University. She used Canva to help me re-design my business logo, and she showed me how to use this simple software to build my graphics.

Here’s a photo of my daughter, back when she was in high school. She was modeling a scarf and hat, which I have tutorials and patterns for here on my website (click the links to see them):

Image shows a lovely young woman wearing a handmade polar fleece hat and a handmade polar fleece scarf. Overlay says "chellywood.com FREE printable sewing patterns and tutorials" and offers the url ChellyWood.com (a website for tutorials and free printable downloadable sewing patterns).
Visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns and tutorials.

In college, she used Canva to help build logos and update the website for the Idaho State University Career Center. She could see that I was struggling to find enough time on my weekends, to renovate my website, which was starting to look clunky next to bigger, better websites.

So one afternoon, when she came home for a visit, she spent an hour showing me how to use Canva.

Once that ball was rolling, here’s how her one-hour introduction helped me out:

  • I can now make my PDF’s much more quickly and efficiently
  • I can now create thumbnails in a fraction of the time it used to take me
  • I can easily attach my logo to any image, including my own photos
  • I can use Canva to build planners, calendars, graphics, and more

So think about taking the class with me! I mean, why not? It’s free, right?

Here’s a link to the Canva course. You just need your name and an email to join. It’s taking place online, on March 23rd.

If you want to try Canva for free beforehand, you can start a free account here. But you don’t have to have an account already, to take the class. You can just join the class as an observer and decide later.

Hopefully I’ll see you there!

The image shows the Chelly Wood doll (designed to look like the real Chelly Wood, a doll clothing designer) seated at her computer in an office setting. The screen shows the URL of Chelly's website: ChellyWood.com. Beside the computer, on Chelly's des, there is a stack of old-fashioned library books because in Chelly's day job, she works as a school librarian. On the wall behind Chelly's computer, we see a painting of Notre Dame cathedral because Chelly also speaks French.
Visit ChellyWood.com for free, printable sewing patterns for dolls of many shapes and sizes.

For those of us who do take the course, let’s all come back to this blog post and leave comments. Let me know what you got out of the course and how it will help you with your business or hobby goals!

10 thoughts on “Let’s take a FREE Canva class together on March 23rd!

  1. Chelly, thanks for the class invite. Although I have no plans to use Canva I do like to know about new software and making my Facebook posts (if nothing else) pop!

  2. I hope you send out a reminder closer to the March 23 date. I would love to learn about new software !

    1. To tell you the truth, I’m going to need a reminder for myself! I think I’ll put a reminder notice on my smartphone to help me remember…

    2. Janice, I got an email from Canva on Friday, March 17 saying to invite others but I saw no link on how to get to the software. I guess I need to go to the original website and try there.

      1. I’m glad you were able to use my “comments” section to talk about it with Janice! Hopefully Canva gets all the glitches and kinks worked out before the class starts on Thursday. I’ve been finding other glitches in their ads too.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.