12 Canva Tips and Tricks EVERY Beginner NEEDS to know (2026 Tutorial) 💡

About this video

Hayes gives a beginner walkthrough of 12 Canva tips, noting some features are free-plan and some are Canva Pro only, with a free 30-day Canva Pro trial linked. She covers: starting a project from a pre-made template (searching e.g. ‘workbook template’ and choosing ‘customize this template’) or from scratch via Create, using preset sizes or a custom size (her example is 5 by 7 inches, in pixels, inches, millimeters, or centimeters); finding elements by browsing categories, searching (her example is ‘pineapple wearing sunglasses’), or generating an element with Canva AI, and noting the crown symbol marks Pro content with different licensing, which free users must pay per design to use watermark-free; Canva frames — identifiable by the grass, blue sky, and cloud scene — where dragging a photo snaps it into shapes, device frames, grids, and mockups such as t-shirts; 3D elements that can be rotated from a center control, including AI-generated ones; solid colors versus gradients, including custom gradient colors and styles, the eyedropper color picker, photo colors pulled from an image, and brand kit colors; the brand kit for logos, colors, fonts, brand voice, and photos — extremely limited on free (three colors) versus full access and up to 100 brand kits on Pro; the Pro-only background remover (BG Remover); photo editing tools including blur (brush or whole image), the Pro-only Magic Eraser, Magic Layers for splitting a flat photo into editable layers, and Style Match (watercolor, doodle, line art, pixel art, pop art, etching); suggested apps such as Vectorfy (Pro) and the Texture app for paper, VHS, grit, film grain, and grunge textures; three ways to add text — a text box from scratch with effects, brand fonts/font combinations, and text apps like Type Studio that add text as an image element; the Resize tool to copy a design into other preset or custom sizes; and Share options including download as PNG, JPG, PDF, or SVG, the Pro-only template link for delivering editable copies to buyers, public view links, saving to Google Drive or Dropbox, and printing options.

Key takeaways

• Start either from a searchable pre-made template or a blank canvas in a preset or custom size — you do not need to research dimensions, and custom units include pixels, inches, millimeters, and centimeters
• Elements with a crown symbol are Canva Pro content: check Canva’s licenses before commercial use, and free-plan users must pay per design to download Pro elements without a watermark
• Frames, grids, and mockups (marked by the grass/sky/cloud scene) let you drag a photo or design in so it snaps into a shape, device screen, layout, or product such as a t-shirt
• Brand kit is the consistency shortcut — one-click access to your logos, colors, fonts, and photos in the editor — but free is limited to three colors while Pro allows full kits and up to 100 of them
• For digital product sellers, the Pro template link under Share creates a unique URL that opens a fresh editable copy for the buyer without touching your original; a public view link is view-only

Episode details: published July 28, 2026 · 29:07 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kate Hayes’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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