[Affinity Designer Shape Border/Stroke]

If you made the mistake of outlining all the shapes of your artwork with a fill and stroke. Then you realized any effects would only apply to the fill and not the stroke. So you deleted all the strokes and there were ugly gaps everywhere between the shapes... And then you asked yourself, "Is there a way to resize the fills out to the missing strokes?"

It looks like the Best answer is to

1. Select the shape
2. Change the color of the stroke to something bright
3. Edit > Copy > Paste which places a second copy over the top of the original
4. Remove the stroke on the new copy, so the bright stroke on the original shows through
5. Use the move tool on the top copy (Shift + grab a handle) to grow the copy to cover the bright stroke under it
6. Name the new copy "no stroke" and delete the original layer with the bright stroke under it 

[How do you blend two colors to make it look gradient-ish]

@Lightning Phoenix, one other example I can show you where "blending" is done with vectors ...is in Inkscape. If you look at it you can watch how he is doing the layering. I always thought it was remarkable that one could get these kind of effects with a vector program.

The complete svg file is located here.
https://www.clipartsfree.net/clipart/17500-ford-mustang-clipart.html

and the video is here..Hope this helps!

 

 

[How do you blend two colors to make it look gradient-ish]

I was really impressed with this guys techniques...if you are using Affinity Designer

 

[Text inside Shape]

Adobe has always had one compelling flaw. They have never cared a bit about their clients. Their software is bloated, their business practices unethical (destruction of Freehand ..far superior and faster than Illustrator .  Right now they are anticipating a huge rise in their stock value according to the Wall Street Journal. They are paranoid as hell that it isn't going to happen as promised. People are fleeing the subscription model now that they have a very fast alternative with a company interested in helping their user base. All 3 Affinity products are rapidly improving and may soon all surpass Adobe's bloated crap (Adobe users have openly admitted they don't use half the crap that Adobe stuffs into their products). As soon as the Printers start carrying the cheaper alternatives, Adobe will be nothing but a Font company and everyone will be thanking Affinity for what they did for us!

[Text inside Shape]

Have to agree that Affinity is becoming a serious contender! I spend my days watching the growing number of Affinity Tutorials on YouTube, and I can't help but notice how the unrequested Adobe video tutorials are Skyrocketing next to them, along with their Ads, even though I never click on them, lol. Someone is VERY WORRIED at Adobe.

[Develop screen comes up so over-exposed as to be unusable]

I know it's not a perfect answer to your question but click on this video url at the selected time 14:14 (..and if you get a chance watch the whole video for all the techniques)