Embellish with Dingbat Fonts

Dingbat fonts are an often over-looked embellishing option for scrapbookers. By altering the images and printing them on various mediums, dingbats offer a wealth of affordable, customizable options for creating accents on your layouts.

What are dingbats?
Dingbats are fonts that are pictures instead of letters. Each keystroke represents a picture or symbol. You download them to your computer just like fonts. For more information on downloading and loading fonts refer to the following articles:

Downloading Fonts
Unzipping a Font File

Once they are loaded onto your computer, use your system’s character map to see what dingbats are included in a set. In most PC operating systems, you can do this by opening the Font folder on your computer and double-clicking on the font file.

Where do you find dingbats? Most likely your system fonts already include a couple of webdings, symbols, or wingding fonts. You can also find many free dingbat sites such as:

DingbatPages.com
DingbatDepot.com

How can you customize dingbats?
Manipulate with a computer:

• Use a photo-editing program to add color, texture, or depth. Here is a great article which explains how to do this.


• Use a word-processing program to flip or rotate the image, change the color, change the size, or layer two images together (ie. put two or more dingbats together to create a grouping).

How can you use dingbats on a scrapbooking page?

• Print as a border
• Print on vellum as an accent
• Print on shrink plastic and make a charm
• Create rebus journaling
• Print on muslin or canvas to create a customized woven label
• Create your own patterned paper
• Use it as a stencil and cut out of paper with an exacto knife
• Print on a transparency and make a unique overlay
• Print on textured cardstock and inset the image on circle tags or small metal frames
• Use dingbat images as letters. For example, use a snowflake dingbat for the letter O in snow
• Create your own custom rub-ons (See Creating Custom Rub-ons for directions)
• Create your own stickers by running the printed image through a Xyron

Examples:

To create the custom woven label in the layout above, I typed the fan dingbat in Word and enlarged the font size to 100. Next I changed the font colors and printed the images out onto scratch paper. I cut a piece of muslin, ran it through my Xyron (or you could use spray adhesive) and placed it over the fan images on the scratch paper. I then reran the paper through the printer.

In the layout above, Amy printed out baby dingbats and changed the font color. Next she punched them out of cardstock and placed them on circle tags for the perfect baby embellishment.

If you can’t find embellishments for a certain theme, need unique shapes to add to a layout, or just want something that no one else has, dive into the pool of dingbat fonts and have fun creating!

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