This is my last post of my blogging series- it's a little later than I planned so sorry about that. In this post I wanted to put together all the free blogging resources like printable calendars and blogging planners, free stock photo websites, editing programmes and samples together in one place. Updated April 2020
1) Free Pretty Printable Calendars
These are good to use as a content calender to schedule posts and stay organised. Monthly calendars are great to print out when there are only a few months left of the year. |
Haute Stock
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Lucid Press has templates that you can customise with your own photos and images. They have both weekly and monthly calendars.
Short Stop Designs has a 12 page monthly 2020 calendar which you can download in portrait or landscape.
Botantical Paperworks have six different 2020 calendar designs ranging from geometric, colour in, boho floral, chalkboard, inspirational and one with eco tips on them.
A piece of Rainbow has a 12 page 2020 calendar with a cute floral design.
Shining Mom has a 12 page 2020 calendar with notes to write on the bottom.
On Sutton Place has a gorgeous floral 12 page calendar.
There's so much to keep track when blogging from post ideas, schedules, promting posts using social media and tracking stastistics so having a planner helps. Below are some free printable pages you can keep in a ringbinder.
Image by melinda257 from Pixabay
A classic black and gold 9 page planner that includes a 2020 calendar, undated monthly calendar and undated monthy editorial calendar. There's a page for a post brainstorming guide, weekly to do list, cover page, contacts page and a blank planner page. To download them you need to sign up to Designer blogs
Angela Giles
This is a pink and white 35 page blogging planner. It contains a brain storming page, blogging stats page, a weekly to do list and calendar and much more.
Carpenter Girl
This a 17 page Blog and Youtube Planner. It includes a passwords page, a monthy stats tracker, a social media planner, an email campaign page, a blog post planner and a youtube video planner. It was created in 2019 but the monthly planner pages are undated so you can use them for any month in the year.
Homeschool Creations
Free 60 page blog planner which includes a page for notes and ideas, a page to track reviews and giveaways, a monthly social media tracker, affilate programme information and more.
3. Free images and Fonts
The websites below have a search facility where you can type in what photo you're looking for and filter through the results and find a photo that meets your needs. Ivory mix and Haute Stock are photo subscription services where you need to sign up first (for free) to get access to the stock photos.
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| Kaboompics |
My go to for stock images, Unsplash has over 1 million free high resolution photos. No attribution required but a credit will be appreciated.
Pixabay is huge catalogue of 1.7 million high quality free photos including vector graphics, illustrations and videos. The Pixabay licence means you don't have to give credit to the photographer (but you are encouraged to link the photo and you can donate the price of a coffee via paypal if you'd like to.) The credit link is a HMTL text which you can copy and paste near the image on the HTML text page. The images are available in different sizes. There are some sponsored images from Shutterstock that are watermarked to let you know that they need to be paid for. Overall though a fantastic library of free images.
Kaboompics
There are over 17,000 images on Kaboompics and the photos are taken by Karolina Grabowska. Photos are free for commercial and noncommercial use. Attribution (credit) is not required but always appreciated. You can modify the photos.
Pexels
Pexels has over 4,900 stock photos and 290 videos. You can use these free photos for personal and commerical use. It's not required to give credit (attribution) it's encouraged to credit the photographer using a copy and paste caption. They often show results from Pixabay and Unsplash as well.
A vast array of Free png clip art images with transparent backgrounds.
Ivory Mix
Founded by Kayla Marie Butler this is a stock photo subscription service. You need to sign up first (it's free) to access the 550 free stock photos on the site. They will also send you 4 free photos a month. The 550 photos are ordered by date so they are harder to search through. They are suitable for personal and commercial use online and in print. Ivory Mix/ Kayla Bulter own the images but credit/attribition is not required but appreciated. You can also become a paying stock photo Member and take out a subscription for $52 for 3 months acess to 4,500 photos, 100 photos sent each month on top, 15 canva templates and members only rewards and Facebook group.
Haute Stock
This is another stock photos subscription service. You can sign up for free for their mailing list to receive 21 free stock photo images (such as the second photo in this post) and then they will send more images with their newsletter. The photos are copywrited by Hautestock but you do not need to give credit/attribution for the photos but it is always appreciated (#hautestock or #hautestockco) You can use this for personal or business marketing but not for clients or people who are not signed up to Haute Stock. You don't need to give any credit card details unless you want to become a member. This will give you access to the library of 4,000 high quality stock photos which you can access for $29 a month.
PhotoPin
Another vast stock free photo library. You can filter photos by licence to see which images are eligible to be used in commercial or non-commercial ways. Both commercial and non-commercial images need to have attribution. You can do this by copy and pasting the Html code or caption provided. On every result page, the first two rows are 'sponsored' images from Shutterstock. So, if you are interesting in browsing through Shutterstock's options, click one of those images. The rows underneath are free and not sponsored. These results use Flickr's API so there will be non professional looking pictures as well as professional ones.
Freepik is a massive database of free vectors and stock photos. Most images are free for commercial and personal use but attrinution is required by copying and pasting a link. If you join the premium download option which starts from 7.50 Euros a month you do not need to attribute the images you use.
Morguefile
Morguefile has 350,000 free stock photos for commercial and personal use. There no attribution needed. They also have a search page for istock, Getty, Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, Dreamtime and Bigstock photos which you will have to pay for.
Befunky See here I use this the most it's really easy to use. You can also do custom/ freestyle collages.You can also pay to access some of the featues like clarity, extra fonts etc.
Pixlr See here and here. There are many different versions most are free. This is a more sophisicated editing software with lots of options. It is similar to photoshop but simplified.
ipiccy see here The programme design looks more basic than Befunky but it actually has a few more tools such as the erase tool which I like to erase background tool to give pictures a crisp picture.
Below is a list of Free Downloadable Photo Editing Programmes
5. Free Samples
If it's awhile until pay day, or your favourite sales assistant at the beauty counter has left or you're saving up for something else in your life making use of freebie sites and samples can plug that gap and broaden the range of brands you can try out and review.
Image by gonghuimin468 from Pixabay
Feel Unique have a Pick and Mix Sample Service where you can choose 5 samples (skincare, makeup, fragrance, body care, hair) for £3.95 postage and packaging. Then you will recieve a £3.95 voucher once you've confirmed that the order arrived. The brands are sold on Feel Unique's website so they are all pretty much well known brands. See my posts Feel Unique Pick and Mix 1 here and Feel unique Pick and Mix Samples 2 here to see the type of things you can expect.
Join Debenhams Beauty Club. As well as their beauty loyalty card where you can accrue points they also sometimes give complimentary samples of new products. The beauty club community is a place to chat about makeup and skincare and they also host beauty challenges where you can win prizes.
Another way of obtaining samples is too use freebie sites. In exchange for raising a brands social network profiles (likes on Facebook page etc), competitions or a filling in a form on the brands website that freebie will be yours. I prefer to fill out forms direct on a brands website, then I know what I am getting and that they are the only ones with my details (click no for sharing information to third party websites.) Also I try and use shops I usually shop in and websites and apps I will use or trust (such as Boots, Asos etc.)
Morguefile
Morguefile has 350,000 free stock photos for commercial and personal use. There no attribution needed. They also have a search page for istock, Getty, Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, Dreamtime and Bigstock photos which you will have to pay for.
Canva
Photos and graphics in Canva are tagged free or 'premium' which cost $1 (75p approx.) You pay the amount when you publish/finished what you're making. This programme is good for creating graphics for blog posts, pintrest, instagram, infographics, diagrams, posters etc.
Photos and graphics in Canva are tagged free or 'premium' which cost $1 (75p approx.) You pay the amount when you publish/finished what you're making. This programme is good for creating graphics for blog posts, pintrest, instagram, infographics, diagrams, posters etc.
Free fonts to download and use
4. Free Editing Programmes
To make your photos look as good as they can, a photo editor is your friend. From cropping out things you don't want in your image, brightening up photos taken in winter when it can be too dark, colour correcting colours, erasing blemishes or simply changing the image size, check out the free photo editing programmes below.
4. Free Editing Programmes
To make your photos look as good as they can, a photo editor is your friend. From cropping out things you don't want in your image, brightening up photos taken in winter when it can be too dark, colour correcting colours, erasing blemishes or simply changing the image size, check out the free photo editing programmes below.
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| Kaboompics |
Befunky See here I use this the most it's really easy to use. You can also do custom/ freestyle collages.You can also pay to access some of the featues like clarity, extra fonts etc.
Pixlr See here and here. There are many different versions most are free. This is a more sophisicated editing software with lots of options. It is similar to photoshop but simplified.
ipiccy see here The programme design looks more basic than Befunky but it actually has a few more tools such as the erase tool which I like to erase background tool to give pictures a crisp picture.
Below is a list of Free Downloadable Photo Editing Programmes
- Photopea (free photoshop)
- Lightroom
- GIMP
- fotoflexer
- Photoscape
Video Editing Software
I haven't used it but Davinci Resolve has been recommended as a good free software option.
If it's awhile until pay day, or your favourite sales assistant at the beauty counter has left or you're saving up for something else in your life making use of freebie sites and samples can plug that gap and broaden the range of brands you can try out and review.
 |
Feel Unique have a Pick and Mix Sample Service where you can choose 5 samples (skincare, makeup, fragrance, body care, hair) for £3.95 postage and packaging. Then you will recieve a £3.95 voucher once you've confirmed that the order arrived. The brands are sold on Feel Unique's website so they are all pretty much well known brands. See my posts Feel Unique Pick and Mix 1 here and Feel unique Pick and Mix Samples 2 here to see the type of things you can expect.
Join Debenhams Beauty Club. As well as their beauty loyalty card where you can accrue points they also sometimes give complimentary samples of new products. The beauty club community is a place to chat about makeup and skincare and they also host beauty challenges where you can win prizes.
Another way of obtaining samples is too use freebie sites. In exchange for raising a brands social network profiles (likes on Facebook page etc), competitions or a filling in a form on the brands website that freebie will be yours. I prefer to fill out forms direct on a brands website, then I know what I am getting and that they are the only ones with my details (click no for sharing information to third party websites.) Also I try and use shops I usually shop in and websites and apps I will use or trust (such as Boots, Asos etc.)
- Magic Freebies This is up to the minute and in my experience they're reliable. The homepage has the latest offers which is updated daily. Then there's the free health and beauty and free fashion clothes and accessories categories.
- Latest Free stuff Look under free health and beauty, free make up. free perfume. free fashion stuff, free women's samples and top 20 freebies.
- Freestuff look under fashion freebies, perfume samples, make up free stuff, hair and beauty free stuff and health and fitness free stuff.
- Money Saving Expert Created by Martin Lewis this website is full of advice and offers. I sign up for the weekly emails as I find the web page a bit confusing and busy, but don't let that put you off. The offers are updated daily and information about them and people's experiences of obtaining them are shared in a forum. It's also good at giving a heads up on magazine freebies and Boots/Superdrug/Supermarket offers.
Some fantastic freebies in there, I find it hard to find decent freebies and most never get delivered I have used latestfreestuff.co.uk, fabfreesamples.co.uk. They are fantastic the best 2 in the UK!
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