Canva is a graphic design platform, similar to Photoshop but can be used by anyone, including kids. And the best part, it’s free for what we’re going to do here. We’re going to use it to create a Look Book (a.k.a. Project Scope Package) and an inspiration board within minutes.

Go to Canva.com and sign up. Log in with Google, Facebook, or with your email address. Then, come back here, click the links below to access your templates and click Use Template.

Canva Look Book and Canva Inspiration Board

[VIDEO]

00:00:28 - 1. Upload Your Pinterest or Houzz Pictures
00:01:26 - 2. Create Your Look Book & Inspiration Board
00:04:10 - 3. Export & Print Your Documents
00:05:09 - 4. Share Your Inspiration

READ THE TRANSCRIPT AND ADDITIONAL NOTES BELOW

1. Upload Your Pinterest or Houzz Pictures

If you chose to use Pinterest, go to your boards and choose 15-20 of your favourite pictures, half being interior pictures and the other half being exterior pictures. If you’re using a Mac, just drag your pictures to your desktop. If you’re using Windows, right click and save to desktop. Create a folder on your desktop that you’re going to put all the pictures into to simplify the next step.

If you chose to use Houzz, you have to do things a little differently. If you’re working from a Mac, press control, command, 4 and a little compass looking arrow will show up. Click/hold the corner of the picture and drag your mouse to draw a rectangle over the picture you want. This will take a screenshot of the highlighted space for you to use. You can do this to any picture, from any site.

If you’re working from Windows… To capture your entire screen and automatically save the screenshot, tap the Windows key or Alt key + Print Screen key (PrtSc). Your screen will briefly go dim to indicate that you've just taken a screenshot, and the screenshot will be saved to the Pictures > Screenshots folder.

2. Create Your Look Book and Inspiration Board

Once you have all your pictures in a folder, go to the side bar on the left and click uploads and either drag them into the uploads area or choose the upload media button at the top, choose your folder, and all the pictures. Drag your pictures individually into the document and directly over the picture you would like to replace. Before letting go it will show you a preview of the change. Once you're happy with the change you can let go. If the picture doesn't fit properly into the space, double click on the picture and move or size accordingly.

Make sure your cover is one of your favourites that give you an overall feel of the type of home you want. You can change the background color of the cover page title by clicking on the background color icon, the + icon, the selector tool, and choose a color from the cover image.

Go to your worksheets and copy your text and paste it in to your Look Book's text boxes by double clicking on the text box. You can also delete or duplicate/add notes to each page by using your command keys or by right clicking, as well as change the font type and size in the banner above.

Feel free to move or add/delete pictures and notes, but make sure you’re not cluttering it too much. You can reorder the pages by choosing the up/down arrows on the top right of each page, duplicate a page, delete a page or add a blank page. You can also add a comment on specific items on a page.

Finish your final page with your contact information. Add your Pinterest or Houzz board link by going up to the top right sidebar or right click, link, and add your url link. Don't forget to add you email address by using the same link tool. Just be sure to add "mailto/" before your email address. This will all be clickable in your PDF version.

3. Export & Print Your Documents

For your Look Book, click download and choose PDF Standard, if you only expect to email (small size file) or choose PDF Print, if you’re also wanting to print (larger size file). If you want to exclude any pages, you can check specific pages or All Pages at the top. I recommend choosing PDF Standard to keep on your device and save on printing. 

For your Inspiration Board, click download and choose PNG. This can be used to share on your Instagram or print and hang in your home. A PNG is a large image file so it's interchangeable between online and print. If you added any effects or animations, be sure to download in a MP4 Video and it will save as a video.

4. Share Your Inspiration

Then - get to work!

Email your Look Book (a.k.a. Project Scope Package) to your hired or potential Design & Build Team. If you like to download your Book on to a platform like we did, go to www.heyzine.com, create your own free account, and share the link with your team.

We want to see your future project! Post your inspiration board in our Activity Feed so we can ohhh and awww 😍 We can't wait to see what you came up with!

You can also share your inspiration board on Instagram but be sure to remember to tag us @homeownerhq so we can see what you’ve come up with!