digital scrapbooking with flair

Studio Blagovesta Gosheva Things I love about You (part of this month’s digi files collection)

Anyone who knows me is aware that I have a special fondness for “badges”. For some reason, I just love cute little buttons with designs or words on them. I used to go kind of crazy using the pieces of flair app on Facebook – in fact, that app is the only reason I joined Facebook in the first place! I simply wanted to make my own flair. Those flair buttons were low resolution though and it wasn’t long before I discovered how much better digi flair is! With all the talented designers in digiland, there is no shortage of fabulous flair to use on our creations.

How to digi scrap with flair

I love the way that the single flair button is acting as a fastener for the journaling card on this layout. Such a simple touch that really makes the page great!

The repetition of flair pieces along the side of this page keep the eye moving through the design and tie everything together perfectly.

Flair buttons don’t have to be round, sometimes they come in rectangles, squares, and even whimsical shapes like hearts. They give nice dimension and interest to any page, and I love the way they add some fun to this beautiful layout!

Flair buttons with words or themes can emphasize the message of the page and call attention to the important points of the memory.

A well-placed piece of flair on a layout is the equivalent of a cherry on top of a cupcake. It just adds a special little something!

A few tips for flair

Pieces of flair are just as easy to use as digital buttons on a layout and can often be shadowed in a similar way. I personally like my flair pieces to have a little more shadowing since they would be thicker than a button in real life.

Shadowing can be done in many different ways and you will need to play around with your own settings to see what you like. There are several tips and great links to explore in our drop shadows tutorial section. For this example, I used a regular button and a flair button (both by Pink Reptile Designs) and applied the following drop shadow settings (in PSE 11):

traditional button:

angle 45 degrees
size 21
distance 23
opacity 37

flair button (badge):

angle 45 degrees
size 21
distance 26
opacity 43

Another tip to keep in mind is the size and proportion of the flair in comparison to other elements of the page. I like to think of these flair buttons as the same size as the little pin on badges you can find in the real world, or pieces of flair from the paper scrapbooking store. Think about the size of the piece in relation to the other items on your page. The layouts displayed at the beginning of this post all demonstrate great proportionate use of flair buttons.