I am a visual person and like things to have a little bit of personality or create an image to convey their meaning. Whether you are also visual or just want to spice up your work, blog, invitations, whatever, you can use these free tools to do so:

stock.xchange – a GREAT place to find stock photos for your presentations. When you search they show the “fee” photos first, but scroll down to find the free ones. Also, be sure that you do look at the restrictions on the photos you want to use. Some photographers want to be notified when their photo is being used. Be sure to respect them!

MorgueFile – another good place to find free stock photos. A lot of the photos here aren’t as great a quality as what you find at the stock.xchange, but you may still be able to find what you are looking for.

Prezi – Give your presentations movement and life and keep your audience with you when you use Prezi. My husband is a high school history teacher, and he loves to use Prezi to keep students captivated. For those of us who still like PowerPoint and believe that it can actually be made to be exciting, you can import your PowerPoint slides into Prezi for a more rich experience. You can use your photos from the first 2 sites to jazz up your Prezi. Oh, and did I mention it’s FREE?

Post-it Note Generator – it’s FREE! Are you one of those people who loves, loves, loves to use Post-its? I have to write things down. Ever since having 2 kids, I can’t remember anything. But sometimes I feel guilty about using so much paper (I have a lot to write down!). This Post-it Generator lets you make your sticky note online and save the image. It’s also a cute way to send a reminder via email to a family member or spouse.

Visuowords – is sort of an interactive thesaurus that can help you find just the right word. Type in the word you are thinking of and it pops up with a whole diagram of related words, and it tells you if each of those words are a kind of your root word, related to, or the opposite of your word. See a new word you like? Double-click that one and it opens up to more related words. One of my favorite parts is that you can zoom in and out and move the screen around. It’s not completely necessary, but makes it a more interactive program.

I hope these FREE tools help you to increase or improve your creativity! If you have stumbled upon any other favorites, please share them in the comments. I’m always looking for more fun, creative, and FREE tools.