One thing I love just as much as fonts are DINGBATS!!!
What are dingbats?! Most of you know, but in case you don’t they are pretty much a font that has symbols and shapes in the position designated for alphabetical or numerical characters.
SO, if you are using a dingbat that is filled with heart symbols and type the letter “A” there should be a heart symbol for that letter. And if you type in “B”, there should be another heart symbol.
Most font websites have dingbats to download as well. My favorite place to go is dafont.com. LOVE their fonts and dingbats.
SO, what do you use these dingbats for?? I use them in so many of my printables and designs. Most are free to use for NON-COMMERCIAL stuff, but you can also download and pay for ones that you plan on using for commercial purposes.
So, for example, this is free for personal and non-profit use and $5 for commercial. Pretty cheap for some cute designs!!
Also, when you go to download the dingbat it will show you what symbols are available as well as the equivalence for each letter key.
A =Flower, B = Another flower, etc.
See below:
So, for this particular dingbat there are symbol for all upper-case and lower-case letters from A-M, and that’s it. Sometimes there will be even fewer symbols, and sometimes there will be symbols for all the letters as well as numbers and punctuation marks.
I use dingbats in PaintShop Pro for my Round-Up graphics:
{The eggs and goodies are all dingbats}
{The circle and flexing dude are dingbats!}
{The sun is a dingbat!}
{The car and sun are both dingbats}
Is this making sense?? I hope so!
With that in mind, I will be sharing with you my favorite dingbats. The images below are set up as follows:
Name of the Dingbat
Symbols in Aa Bb Cc Dd structure. So, for 2 Peas GG Loves Me, A = Heart, a = 2 Peas in a Bucket symbol, B = heart, and so on. If the symbol is there twice in a row it means that the same graphic is used for “A” and “a.”
SO, without further adieu… My Favorite Free Dingbats – Part 1:
{Glamocon}
{Evilz}
{
{Efon}
Aren’t these amazing?! And what’s great is when you are searching for these dingbats on a font website they have them categorized which helps. if you are looking for something in particular. ๐
SO AWESOME, right?! And we haven’t even touched the surface. So many great ones to get for free (and even more that you can buy!!)
I had so many favorites I am doing one more segment tomorrow with 20 more dingbats to fall in love with!
For more FREE fonts and graphics be sure to check out:
Even More FREE Frames & Graphics
For all Free Prints go HERE.
For all FREE Font Collections go HERE.
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ENJOY!
These are awesome! I use dingbats all the time as cut files for cards, scrapbook pages and other stuff. But there are some here I haven’t seen before!
Aren’t dingbats SO much fun!?!?
Really cool! I have never seen any of these…thanks for sharing:)
I’ve never used these before, but I can’t wait to try these out. Thanks so much for sharing!
Oh bless you! This is such a helpful post!! I am just sitting here on my new mac downloading some new fonts, and I remembered all your recent posts on fonts. Thank you so much for giving us a little behind the scenes on how to do this sort of stuff. I am still learning. Do you have any idea if you’d need to purchase the commercial dingbats if you are making a printable and planning to share it? (not sell it, but share it on your blog for others to use). I was wondering, where do you find cute borders and backgrounds? (Like all the chevron backgrounds that you use, and a few posts ago, you used a cute yellow scallopy thing in one of your font roundup posts). I have no clue where to find those things. Thanks for ALL your help!!! xo
Hey girl!! Unfortunately, I’m not sure on all the legalities of the dingbats and fonts, but for printables on my site I’ve asked tons of people and they all said it was fine if you are offering it for free on your site, so I use them. The chevron and polka dot backgrounds I get from Aimee at SprikeSpace.com. She is awesome!! I bought the commercial license for some polka dot backgrounds because I was using them on my business card. Hope that helps. ๐
I know this is gonna sound dumb, but I am new to this whole Dingbat thing, they are really cute, but how do you use them?
Hi Maureen! I use my dingbats for printables and designs. They work just like fonts but instead of letters they are graphics/images. They are so fun and super addictive to use! ๐
thanks so much for these….i have used some dingbats before and then my pc died and i’m trying to figure out my mac. even when i drag the fonts/dingbats onto the font book, and it shows that they’re installed, i can’t find them on my font list when i try to do something. sigh. anyway….i love these and downloaded some, but i can’t find the link for the evilz dingbats or the silbooettes, which i adore. would it be possible for to lead to these guys? thanks so much for you and all your inspiration. you totally rock!
Sorry it took so long but I finally added those links to the post. Hope it helps. ๐
Wow! These are so cool! Thank you for the list!
Wow, so cool! How did I not know what these were? ๐ Just downloaded almost all of them. (the xmas and a different one didn’t have links)
Hey girl – I finally added the correct links to these. Hopefully it works this time. Aren’t they so fun!?
Too cool! I had no idea there were so many cool dings! Thanks for sharing! I would love for you to share this (and any other creations) at Pin It and Win It Wednesday @ http://www.cheapcraftymama.com!
Thanks so much!
the link for Glamocon ding bats should be
http://www.urbanfonts.com/dingbats/Glamocon___RetroBats.htm
not
http://www.urbanfonts.com/dingbats/Retro_Bats_One.htm
Hi Kirstyn! I just started a free fonts link-up on my blog I Heart Free Fonts and would love for you to link this tomorrow (or any other font posts you have!) http://iheartfreefonts.com/2013/05/06/free-fonts-linkup/
These are too cool! I am so excited to get started on so many new projects! Can you send a tutorial as to how you put text on top of a dingbat? I cannot figure out how to do that! In your examples you have a circle or a sun and then you typed inside of it. Thanks so much!!
Hi Alison! I do most my stuff in Paint Shop Pro, but you can do this in Picasa. You would just add the shape – press APPLY and then add TEXT. It’s super easy. ๐
I downloaded your free Christmas font and now have a new home page that has take over my computer. I am very distressed because I can’t seem to replace it with my old homepage. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I’m so sorry, Becky!! I’ve never had that happen. Which font was it? None of these are my own fonts and come from the regular font downloading sites. :/
Hi!! Love what you do! Everything is so cute!! Would love to use the “easter desserts” font you used in your graphic, do you happen know the name? Thank you so much!!
Be still, my beating heart! So fab to find another font-dingbat geek like myself…I have over 400…and my computer guy thinks I am totally bonkers! Thank you for sharing…Blessings from Port Huron, Michigan.