Free Stuff Online-Even Webinars!

Today I want to talk about resources that are online that may help with your craft business, with your painting skills, with your volunteer aspirations.  I am a student in many senses of the word, and I absolutely LOVE to learn!  I am fascinated by listening to, going to and trying out things I am interested in.  Your craft business, although an awesome thing to take on, should not be your only focus in life!  There's family life, there's spiritual growth, learning new techniques, learning new ways to run your business and there's volunteer work to be done.  I recently began to pursue some of these online and you wouldn't believe what I found!  So this post will be giving a few of these resources!

As family and/or spiritual life, I have a few awesome resources!

1.  Kay Arthur's Precept Ministry where you can watch broadcasts or study on your own!
     http://precept.org/precepts_for_life

2.  Joyce Meyer Ministries is awesome!  Believe it or not, she looks and sounds a bit like my aunt Delores! haha!  I love watching her because of that!  But I also love watching her because she tells it just the way it is.  She doesn't mince words or try to make everything all pretty so we will pretend we're Christians, but she delivers it just where the rubber hits the road!  You can read her books but you can also see her broadcasts online as well:

     http://www.joycemeyer.org/broadcasthome.aspx

3.  You can get books and studies by Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, Kay Arthur and many other authors, which you can buy at christianbook.com which is about the cheapest I've found online.  There are  plenty of male study leaders too, but because I'm a woman, well, I have been involved in studies taught by women.  Randy Alcorn one male author that I have read, his book Heaven, was one that challenges your thinking of what you thought was in the bible and what is actually there!

4.  If its preaching or shows you want, go to:
    
     http://www.daystar.com/

The second area is that of learning new techniques for your art or craft.  I paint, so I found free art lessons online.

    http://www.creativespotlite.com/acrylic-painting.htm
    http://www.free-online-art-classes.com/Learn-Oil-Pastels-Introduction.html

    http://www.jerrysartarama.com/art-lessons/Medium/Acrylics/index.html?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=Free+Art+Lessons&gclid=CN6wpK31yKQCFcFrKgodBgt1Cg (lots of mediums here, not just acrylic!).

    http://www.livepaintinglessons.com/
    http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=painting+lessons+online
    youtube.com you can do a search for different types of arts and crafts and there are massive "how-to" videos there as well!

I'm sure there are many more freebees online if you did a search.  Just be careful with the word "free" because some webpages are listed as "view for free" which translates into "you can see it on this website, but we're going to charge you to use it! 

I just recently discovered free online webinars!  I hooked up on linked in with a company that offers free webinars!  I'm sure there are others, but I have gotten to know the person who promotes these on linked in and I'm quite impressed with him and what he offers!

    http://www.smallbusinesscentr.com/webinars/

Now if you're talking of nonprofit business or volunteering, you might want to check out webinars about these areas that you're interested in.  My husband and I are working on starting up a nonprofit business helping the aging and people who fall through the cracks because they are just a few dollars over the income limit for help and because of this, I found a few online resources as well that offer information blogs and webinars!

    http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/b/tsblog/
    http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/PublicService.shtml
    http://foundationcenter.org/events/archive/ny_startup_series/startup_1.html

I don't want to overwhelm you, so I'll stop there, but you get the point.  To be content in life, it is vital that you are a well-rounded person, so round away with free resources offered online!  Today I attended a webinar on Quickbooks for nonprofits which was very interesting!  Since we are about to embark on this nonprofit, the easier financial things and quarterly & yearly reports go, the better for this not so math oriented person! haha!  The webinar really helped me to understand the things nonprofit companies must think of when setting up their books.  I don't know that we will use Quickbooks or not, but that doesn't matter, it gave me a view of what it looks like to set something up like that!  So don't limit yourself to things you know you'll buy for workshops because you could be missing out on a lot of very valuable and free information!

Enough of this blog for today!  I'm off to do the Sunday morning slides for our church (a volunteer activity).  Hope you find a lot of awesome resources!  Share them with me if you can!

LuAnn Marie