DIY Secret Revealed! How to make super cute, printable baby monthly milestone signs and decorations for parties and showers for free!
animal-themed, six months old!
Free Printable Baby Monthly Milestone Sign Samples!
Chances are, you're like me; you can't find cute and free printable signs to use to celebrate your baby's monthly milestones! You probably found something that you liked, but you'll have to pay for it, you can't customize it, and it's just super generic. Luckily for you, there's a free and fun way to create and customize monthly milestone signs for your baby!
Look at these pretty signs I've made.
Circus themed- 4 months old
circus themed- 11 months old
Though I am an artist, I'm not a graphic designer, and I'm not that good at making vector art. (I did use to draw with a mouse and then a Wacom Cintiq, but that was many, many years ago.) I don't claim these lovely graphics as my own; they are free to use, or under a one-time license by Canva.com. Canva is an amazing web-based application where you can design and create all types of images and projects: buttons, banners, posters, signs, blog graphics, presentations, flyers, invitations, social media covers, e-book covers, ads, decorations... PCWorld calls Canva a "free tool [that] brings much-needed simplicity to design process..."
Simply put, Canva makes design easy and transforms anyone with a computer and a mouse into a "graphic designer."
Creating Free Baby Monthly Signs: Getting Started
Visit canva.com and sign up for a free account. You can connect with your Facebook or Google account(s). Accounts are free and there are no premium accounts. The only time you would have to pay is when you're using graphics that aren't free, and require you to buy the license for usage. Most of the time (maybe all of the time), the graphics that aren't free to use are $1 USD a piece. These graphics are also watermarked.
screenshot taken of canva.com
Once you've signed up for an account and are logged in, it's time to play around with the web app and start designing!
You can create a design using Canva's built-in template sizes or click on "Use custom dimensions" to create an image any size of your choice. For example, it can be a 125px x 125px image. To make printable baby monthly milestone signs, I choose the default "Poster" template. You can use the SEARCH function to find graphics you'd like to use. To create a circus-themed sign, I typed in circus and found all these cute free graphics! You click on a graphic you like, and just drag it into your blank canvas.
You can change the colors of most of the graphics and their transparency levels. (This cute lion can be green, purple, or blue!) You can layer graphics on top of each other, change their positions (back versus forward), and for photographed images, you can flip them horizontally. You can even upload your own graphics!
You can also change the background color and add text. One drawback is that you're limited to the small selection of fonts that Canva provides.
While playing around with Canva, if you need help, you can always click on the "Need help?" button.
Animal-themed baby monthly milestone sign, 11 months old!
Canva.com Top Tips
Don't click on the "Make public" button if you don't want to share your work with the community.
Play around, play around, play around. You're not going to become a Canva Pro in just a day or two.
Check out http://www.colourlovers.com for color themes and copy down your favor hex color codes.
Explore all the graphic options to find the best free graphics to use. You can look up the information of the graphics and find sets that are created by the same artists.
Don't be married to your first creations. The beauty of Canva is that you can keep creating new designs.
When downloading your work, chose PDF for print for a high-quality PDF to print out.
Chose high-quality (PNG) image for your digital publications.
Most of the time, the images original colors are great as they are, but it's always fun to change the images up a bit with colors of your choice!
You can create printable toppers (to put on top of cupcakes, or print out as stickers!). You can create printable tickets that you can cut out and give out at a circus or carnival-themed party. You can make water bottle labels, thank you cards, invitations, flyers... You can make practical anything you'd like to print out and distribute using Canva.com!
Now, you can even design your own book covers for free, indie authors!!!
Forget about paying artists hundreds of bucks to design you a book cover (or begging your sister and paying her hundreds of bucks like I used to!); use Canva to create your own stunning cover designs like I had!
I encourage you to try out Canva.com ASAP! Just note that you should read all the fine print in detail of course, and that after you've created lovely designs using Canva's graphics, you can not sell them as prints or any other types of "on demand" products, including postcards, mugs, t-shirts, posters and other items on Etsy or wherever else.
Mommies and Daddies out there, will you try out Canva.com? Have any cool designs you'd like to share? If you have any questions, please leave us a comment!
