How To Make Lined Paper in Canva in 2023 (Complete Guide)

Complete guide on how to make lined paper in canva and break the 100-page limit? This guide provides simple steps that are easy to follow. Making lined pages is a great way of making your own lined paper to print out for free.

Lined pages are also great for when you want to create lined notebooks but also if you want to make more formal documents, such as resumes, or contracts. And while Canva does have a page limit of 100 pages, there is a way to bypass this.

So let me show you how to make lined paper in canva and how to download the pdf for printing.

How To Make Lined Paper In Canva

Are you already familiar with creating book covers and understanding Amazon book sizes from prior experience? If not, consider reading my blogpost on “How to Publish Books on Amazon” and “How to Create a Book Cover in Canva.” But if you need a brief explanation, here it is: To create a book for Amazon KDP, like a 6×9 inch standard black and white notebook with lined pages, go to https://kdp.amazon.com/cover-calculator and input your measurements.

Step-by-Step Guide to Make Lined Pages in Canva:

1. Go to Canva.com and create a custom design in 6 x 9 inches
2. Choose between the easy way or the fast way:

Easy Way: 3. Click on the Elements tab and select Lines & Shapes.

4. Click on the line and add it to the canvas.
5. Change the color to a lighter shade, adjust the line weight, and adjust the line length.
6. Lower the transparency to around 80.
7. Copy and paste the line to create additional lines.
8. Use the Tidy Up function to adjust the space between the lines and the top and bottom of the page.
9. Duplicate the page to create multiple pages, then download as a PDF file.

Fast Way: 3. Press the ‘L’ key to add a line.

4. Adjust the size of the line to be bigger than the canvas.
5. Change the color to a lighter shade, adjust the line weight, and adjust the line length.
6. Lower the transparency to around 80.
7. Copy and paste the line to create additional lines.
8. Use the Tidy Up function to adjust the space between the lines and the top and bottom of the page.
9. Duplicate the page to create multiple pages, then download as a PDF file.

If you want to see how to do this with images here is a image tutorial.

First off you want to decide the size of your lined paper and the best way to do that is to go to Amazon KDP cover calculator.

As you can see this cover-calculator shows us the book size so when you make the cover you make it in the size of 12.52 x 9.25 inches. Is this important on how we make the lined pages, well not really but it’s still important for you to decide how big you want the notebook to be in terms of pages.

There are two questions a lot of people ask themselves. I’ve seen loads of questions about this on the internet and not really and good answers.

How many lines in a 6×9 notebook?
Answer: 26-30 lines

How many lines in a 5×8 notebook?
Answer: 23-25 lines

So head back to Canva.com

Click on “Create a Design” and press “Custom Design” and this window pops up.

Here the choice is 6 x 9 inches because we wanted to make the book like that right.

Press: Create new design and head into the design editor.

How To Create Lined Paper In Canva

So you are inside Canva and in front of you is your first page.
Now from here on out there are 2 ways to make lined pages.

I would say that both ways are easy but one is faster than the other. But I will explain both in two different categories below.

I will call one the easy way and the other the fast way

Easy Way To Make Lines In Canva

Head over to the left side of the page and click on the Elements tab.

Here you see Lines & Shapes.
Click “see all”.

Click on the line to add it to your Canva.
It will look like this.

Now we encounter 4 problems.

1. The Color is wrong, black is too dark for lined pages in a notebook.
   Solution: Click on the top left box and change color (follow arrow 1)

2. The line is too thick. 
   Solution: Click on the top left box next to the color box and adjust line weight (follow arrow 2)

3. The line needs to be adjusted.
   Solution: Click, hold and drag the circles outside of the canva a little bit. (see arrow 3)

4. The line is too intense. 
   Solution: Click the Transparency box and lower it to your liking. I usually do 80! 

Ok so now we have a line that is perfect for our lined notebook.
Time to start to copy this line and make our lined pages.
Right Click on the line and click copy and then paste.

Now you have your second line.

Click the white Canva and drag your markings so it covers the two lines.
Repeat the above process with copy and paste.

This is what it looks like now and I went with 26 lines.

We need to fix this mess right?
Let me show you, first we need to decide how much space we want in the top before the first line and the same at the bottom of the page.

I also need to line up the lines so they extend outside of the canva as we talked about earlier.

Now we do it in 3 steps.

1. Click the canva and drag and mark all the lines.
2. Click on position in the right corner.
3. Click tidy up.

Now it looks like this.

Ok perfect, now the page is done and we can head over the the duplicate function of Canva to create more pages and get a good interior.

Now just click the duplicate symbol above the canva and copy until you have 100 pages!

Now it’s time to download, press the upper right corner on the button Share.
Pick File type PDF print.
Press download.

Well done!
Keep reading to get to know how to make a PDF with more than 100 pages

Fast Way To Make Lines In Canva

Now I will show you the fastest way.
If you have made lined pages in Canva before you know how to make them but maybe you don’t know how to do it the fast way!

I will explain this without so many images, so some of the steps you need to know the basics that I wrote about earlier.

1. Make your Canva the right size.
2. Press the L key on your keyboard (this will add a line)
3. Adjust the size of the line so it is bigger than the canva.
4. Change color to gray, light gray or the color of your liking.
5. Change the size of the line (i usually use the size 2)
6. Change transparency to around 80.
7. Mark the line and press ctrl + c and add it with ctrl + v.
8. Mark the 2 lines and repeat step 7 until you have the number of lines you want.
9. Fix the upper and lower line and then press position and tidy up.
10. In the down right corner press the page tab.

11. While in the page tab, mark your page and Ctrl + D until you reach 100 pages OR you can mark the page and press Ctrl + C for copy and Ctrl + V for paste.
    When you make 10 pages, mark those 10 pages and Ctrl + C for copy and Ctrl + V paste until you reach 100 pages.

How to Make More Than 100 Lined Pages in Canva?

If you followed the easy guide for fast guide you now have lined pages right?

Go to the share button and press it, press download and choose PDF print as File type.
Press download.

Now go back to your 100 lines pages canva and delete as many as you need.
In my case I delete 80 of the pages I made so I have 20 left and I repeat the above download process. 

Don’t forget to rename the document to 20 lined pages or the name you prefer.

Now you will have two PDF documents.

Head over to https://smallpdf.com/merge-pdf or https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/merge-pdf.html and click on merge.

Press select, choose your 2 two different files, 100 lined notebook and 20 lined notebook.

Press Merge.

Press download and you are done!

Conclusion

Canva really is a great tool for making different designs and it is great for people just starting out. So I hope this article helped you learn how to make lined paper in Canva.  

Now when you have your lined notebook interior ready you can head over to my blog post about how to Make Book Cover in Canva. 

I hope you found this guide helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

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