Creativity Boosts

As a homeschooling mom of three little ones, my creative time is limited.  I love to try new things...and challenge myself in new pursuits, but the time involved in learning something new hands-on is often time that I don't have.

In the past few years, I have found online courses in a variety of subjects to be a great way to learn and enjoy new crafts, skills, and hobbies. While some courses have a definite timeline for instructor involvement, many enable you to work at your own pace (a huge perk for a full schedule) and allow extended access to the course materials.

Here are a few courses that are beginning soon that I've had experience with in recent years!

Last year, I came across Jeanne Oliver's Creatively Made Home course. The content was beautiful, instructive, inspiring, and original. 

So it was quite easy to decide to join in for her newest class (which begins today!) I am SO excited about this year's Creatively Made Home: Home for the Holidays! The course includes over 30 videos from each of 9 instructors, focusing on cooking, decorating, and gift-giving, PDF supply lists and instructions for each project, a digital recipe book, and much more. The course content is accessible for two years. If you'd like to sign up, just click here!

Back in 2009, I took an online photography course from Karen Russell (who I had previously taken a scrapbooking class with while we lived in Texas). I loved her approach to photography...self-taught, Karen values capturing the everyday moments of her family. 

Taking this course gave me confidence to actually leave my automatic camera settings behind and really helped to train my eye to best capture the moment. While this course is pricey, the value far exceeds the cost. 

Karen has three courses slated for 2014...registration for the first course begins today (10/15) at 9 am Pacific Time. Her classes tend to sell out SO fast so don't miss out. She also has auditing options which are less expensive. You can learn more about Snapshots of a Good Life here.

My favorite source for scrapbooking related online courses is Studio Calico. They teach one course a month, and have included courses that teach stamping, photography, letterpress, mini-albums, and a variety of technique courses for scrapbooking. Classes (which vary in price from month to month) often will include a class kit or downloadable images...and access to past classes is always granted.

You can register up to a month in advance for a class; currently registration is open for "Lifted" with Lisa Truesdell. I recently took the Letterpress class and really look forward to taking time this fall to practice this technique more!

I hope that you might try an online course...and if you have any favorites to share, please do so in the comments!

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Just a note...the past week was spent out of town, and while I had a number of posts ready to share, time did not allow for working at the computer. Instead, I spent LOTS of time with extended family and my children as we celebrated two of their birthdays...and that was what we needed. Sometimes, living a creative life requires spending time AWAY from the internet! I plan to post-date those blog posts I had planned for last week this week as time allows...so please continue reading!

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This is Day 15 of 31 Days: Crafting a Creative Life. You can find an archive of all the posts from this series here. Thanks for joining me this month!