The 'Perfect Pause' Trend：How To Create It In Canva In Minutes

You've probably seen this trend when you're scrolling Instagram or TikTok, a cutout of something sliding across the screen and you've got to tap to try and stop it exactly on the outline. I call it the perfect pause and it's actually really clever because it gamifies your content and it encourages people to play your reel over and over to get it right. And I know some people who are competitive enough to not give up till they've nailed it. And of course, that repeat playing and viewing is exactly what the algorithm loves. So today we're going to build one completely inside Canva and I will cover a few different ideas for how you could use this for your own business. Inside Canva, we're going to start with a mobile video design. The first thing we want to do is to add a background layout for our video. Now you can add a plain background if you want to or a branded background. I'm just going to go to the photos library and I'm going to search for a countertop background. I'm going to just scroll through and see if there's any that I particularly like. When I found one, I'm just going to click on it to add it to that back layer. And it only has to be a few seconds long. This is the background I'm going to be using. Next, we want to add the element that's actually going to be moving, the one that we want to find that perfect moment for. And so I'm going to just search in the library here so that it's easy for you to follow and search for coffee cup. Now it brings up a coffee cup that is already a cutout. So if I click and drag that on, you'll see it's already cut out, which is perfect for us. But of course, if you have an image with your product that doesn't have a cutout already, you can just drag it on and then use background remover to remove the background and get yourself that cutout image. Going back to the one that I already chose, I will click and drag it on because if I just click it from the library, it will add to the bottom here. Now you'll see my playhead was at the end of this clip and that's why the image of the cup has placed itself there. So I'm just going to click and drag it all the way to the beginning so that it lines up. I'm going to click on the bottom here to zoom on the thumbnails of the actual timeline. And I'm going to just drag that a little bit to the right to increase the magnification just so I can see it a little better. Now I'm going to line up this cutout of where I want it to be. And just for fun, I'm actually going to add a circle shadow underneath the cup or where the cup is placed. And for that, I'm actually going to go back to my elements and look in the graphics library. And I will pull one of these in and place it just below the cup to kind of give the illusion of it being on the counter. And then in the position tab, I'm going to send that behind the cup and I'm going to make it a little bit more transparent. Basically, this is the moment that we are trying to capture. Now, to make it a little harder for people to capture the moment, we want to create that outline. Now, one way that you can do this is simply by going to edit and then going to shadows. And you can see if you have a look at all the shadow options, there is an outline option. And that will give you an outline around that cutout. Now, the thing with that is that you actually have to have the whole thing moving, including the outline. But we want to create a little more of an interesting effect and something that looks a little less like it's easy to create in Canva. So I am just going to take that shadow away. And what we're going to do is we're going to click on the cutout. We're going to go to apps and we are then going to search for the outliner. And when we hit enter, you'll see this little image outliner where this little star pops up. I'm going to click on that app. And then because I've got that selected, it shows me that and there is a faint white outline. And if I change the color to red, you will see that there is a red outline. I'm going to make it a little bit bigger because we want it to really stand out. And then once I'm happy with it, I'm going to change it back to white because that's actually what I want for the final version. Now, we could just leave it like that, but that's actually what we already did using that shadow effect. What we're going to do here with the app is we're going to go down to the bottom and click hollow outline effect. And what that does is it actually removes the image from the outline. And then we're going to click add to design. So now we have just the outline and the image separately. And this is what creates this really nice effect for us. Now I'm going to just line up that outline so that it fits perfectly by just clicking and dragging it. It doesn't have to be 100% perfect, but we want to try. And before we get the final version done cover some ways that you could actually use this for your own brand. If you're enjoying these Canva tutorials and you want more inspiration, insight, and design tips delivered straight to your inbox every week, I would love you to join my newsletter. It's where I share a lot more about design and building a business that you love that I don't share anywhere else. There's no fluff, no spam, just useful stuff to help you grow creatively in a more human way. So just head to the link on the screen right now or in the description below to join the newsletter. The next thing we're going to do very simply is to animate the cup. And this is really easy in Canva. So I've selected it in the timeline and I'm going to click and drag it all the way up so that it's just on the screen. Then I'm going to click on animate and create an animation so that I'm actually drawing a path. And what I'm going to do is just click on it using my shift key to stay in a straight line. I'm going to drag it all the way down until it's right off the page. And that's the animation effect that I am creating. Now, the one thing I wanted to show you, and it's really easy to do this this way, is just trim everything so that it's just one second in the timeline. This is one of the easiest ways to do this because Canva doesn't really have a repeat option for animations. So what we're going to do is just do this one second animation of that cup falling. Now, before we do anything in the animation itself, I want to change it to steady so that it's got a kind of even pace as it drops. And we click done. And you'll see that that just runs as it goes behind the outline is where you're supposed to try and click it so that it stops perfectly aligned. And that's the whole fun of this game. It's only one second, but if I play through, you can see how the cup drops. And it's slow enough that you can see what it is, but fast enough that it creates a little difficulty if you just click on it. Now, to make it easy on ourselves, rather than trying to copy and paste this whole selection over and over and make sure it works, all we're going to do is we're going to go to share, download, choose MP4 video, and we're going to download this one second clip. Next, we're going to go to uploads, and we're going to re-upload that clip we just exported. And once it's uploaded, all we have to do is just click it a number of times to add it to our timeline. I would suggest doing around 10 seconds of this, but you could do even shorter and people will just replay it as it runs. Now, if I go back to the beginning, I'm going to delete what's actually in there, our working files, which you don't have to do, but I'm going to do it to show you how this works. And then when you hit play, it will just play through and it will repeat over and over, so people have to try and time it right to actually get the coffee cup in there. And then the last thing that we want to do is just add a bit of text. Taking my playhead to the beginning, I am then going to just add in a text box, and that text box is just going to say, can you capture the perfect moment? I'm going to change it to white and change it to a different font and just brand it the way I want it to look. I'm also going to go back into the elements library and I'm going to search for a finger tap icon. And then I'm going to add that from the graphics library, just something really clean and simple, which indicates to people what they actually need to do. And I'm going to leave that underneath the text. Now, making sure that those stretch across the entire thing, if I play through now, you will see the full effect of what we have. You could add a bit of branding if you wanted to, whatever works for you. And then all you have to do is to go to share and download this entire video, which is just a repeat of the shorter video clip we created with the text and logo. This format could work for a whole range of ideas and industries. You could use it to mark a very specific experience. Think someone jumping off a jetty into a lake or a match lighting a candle. Anything with a specific moment in time works well here. And it taps into that same satisfaction of things just clicking into place. You could use it to show off a new product landing in someone's hand or on a shelf or a burger dropping onto a plate, a new bottle sliding into its spot in the display. It's a really nice, low effort way to make a product launch feel a bit more dynamic than just a static photo. Or you could use it to complete an illustration or image. So the moving piece is a cutout and part of the bigger picture and pausing it finishes the artwork on the screen. This could be super fun because you could have three or four different variations like hairstyles that land on someone's head to create different looks or outfits to try on. The common thread with all of these is that satisfying perfect moment. So it's worth taking some time to think about what you could create that relates to your brand or business. So here's my finished version created just using assets from Canva's library. And of course, this idea is genuinely reusable. If you've done this once, you can easily swap the object in the background for a pretty much anything and have a new version ready in a few minutes just to add some interest. If you've enjoyed this tutorial, I've popped a couple of other related videos on screen right now that I think you will probably also be interested in. And I would appreciate it if you'd subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet so that I can keep creating more content like this for you. Have a fabulous week and I will see you soon. Bye-bye.