You don’t have to be a professional graphic designer to create your own birthday invitation. You can do it yourself, at home, for free!
Today I’m going to show you how to create a birthday invitation using the friendly online platform Canva.
Canva became very popular among designers, as well as individuals who want to make their own DIY designs. It’s no wonder why: Canva is easy to use, produces stunning results and is completely free (unless you upgrade to the PRO version).

Recently I tried out Canva for the first time. Since I design and sell cliparts, I wanted to see how people with different graphic design abilities can use my cliparts to make professional-looking designs easily, without special equipment and with no previous knowledge in the area. With Canva it was easier than I thought! Let’s see how you too can use Canva for your own designs.

Easy Canva tutorial: Design a birthday invitation

For the invitation that I created in this post, I used my Vintage Circus Clipart set, which is available in my Etsy shop. You don’t have to purchase any graphics to design with Canva. Canva itself has a collection of images you can use for free, and you can also use images and backgrounds from free stock sites like Pixabay. Additionally, you can upload images or photos of your own. Just make sure they don’t infringe anyone else’s copyright.

Canva also has a special page for designing invitations, with templates and useful guides (canva.com/invitations). 

In this tutorial you will learn how to use the different features of Canva to make your design. After going through these steps you will be able to use Canva for any design you want!

This tutorial is for absolute beginners, so you can follow it even if you never heard of Canva before. 

STEPS:

1. Open a free account. Canva will offer you the paid pro version, which has more features and graphic resources, but you don’t have to take it. As long as you don’t actively upgrade to pro, you will have the free version by default.

2. Create a new design. Click on the ‘create a new design’ button, on the top right. A drop-down menu will open. Canva has pre-made templates you can choose from, which is very nice. But for my invitation I wanted a specific size, so I clicked on ‘custom dimensions’ in the drop-down menu and set my invitation to be 4.25”X6”.

3. Change background color. If you click on your currently blank design, you’ll see an icon for changing the background color. Click on the icon to choose a color for your background.

4. Add images. On the left side menu you can find different types of graphics to add to your design. I wanted to use images from my own computer, so I clicked on ‘upload’. There, I clicked on ‘upload an image or video’ and uploaded my vintage circus clipart graphics.

5. Position your images. The uploaded images appear on the left. To place them onto your design, simply drag each one onto the background.
To scale the image, grab the corner of its bounding box and stretch it with the mouse. To rotate, click on the round arrows mark under the image.

* To undo or redo an action, click on the turning arrows on the blue top bar. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcuts ctrl+Z to undo and ctrl+shift+Z to redo.

6. Copy and flip images. When you click on any graphics on your artboard, a line of editing options appears. I wanted the flags to be on both sides of my page, so I had to duplicate the image and flip it. I clicked on the flags image, and then I clicked on the ‘duplicate’ button (on the top right) to make a copy of it. Next, I clicked on the ‘flip’ button and chose ‘flip horizontal’ from the drop-down menu.

TIP: Another way to duplicate an image is to hold down the Alt key and drag the image with the mouse.

7. Add text. If you click on the ‘text’ label on the left side menu, you will see many text styles to choose from. Any option which is marked with a small crown is available only if you have the pro version of Canva.
Click on any of the text samples and it will appear on your artboard. If you click on the text on your artboard, text-editing options will appear. I used the options to choose fonts that I liked.

You can scale and rotate text just like you did with the images. To stretch the bounding box of the text instead of the text itself, click on the handles on the left and the right of the text’s bounding box. This is handy when you want the text to spread over larger or smaller area.

Click on the ‘…’ (three dots) mark in the text editing menu bar, and you’ll get more options for controlling your text. I used the ‘position’ button to align my text to the center.

8. Select multiple images. As you add more images to your design, you might want to select multiple images at once. To do that, click on the images while holding the ‘Shift’ key.

9. Use shapes. I added a cloud-like strip to the bottom of my invitation. This is actually an element from the ‘Shapes’ gallery of Canva. To find the shapes gallery, Click on the ‘Elements’ tab on the left menu, and find ‘Shapes’. Click on the ‘Shapes’ title and the full shapes gallery will open. That’s where I found my cloud.

Click on a shape and it will pop on your artboard. When you click on the shape on your artboard, the color icon will appear and you’ll  be able to change the shape’s color.

I wanted this shape to fill up the width of my page, but I didn’t want to enlarge it. Instead, I made 3 copies of the shape and combined them into a long, continuous shape.

Next, I grouped the three copies by selecting all of them (Shift+click on each one) and then clicked on the ‘Group’ button. Once elements are grouped, you can move them around together as if they were one.

10. Positioning elements and selecting hidden elements. These two parts are very handy. If you want a certain element to be behind other elements, use the ‘Position’ button to send the element backwards.

If you want to select an element but another element is lying on top of it and blocking your way, click on the element you want to select while holding down the shift key. This will make your cursor pick the element at the back instead of the one at the front.

11. Use transparency. Transparency is a great way to add details to your design without overloading it. The transparency option appears when you click on one of your graphic elements.

I added fireworks to the background, just to fill up some blank areas in a subtle way.

And here we have it! A DIY birthday invitation created with Canva!

You can save your work by clicking the ‘Save’ button or download it to your computer (note that with the free version of Canva the file format and quality is limited compared to the paid version).

You probably noticed that Canva has many more features and editing options that I didn’t mention. Now that you know the basics of this fun tool you can go and explore them.

Here is the vintage circus clipart set that I used for my birthday invitation design (click to see it):

More party ideas for you:

If you are in a party mood, don’t miss out on these free goodies! My collection of free printables has lots of fun things to print and make. Here are a few of them:

Make a DIY circus coloring kit for you circus themed party favors:

Print these adorable luau party favor box:

Have your pool party set up with this free set of pool party printables: