The creation of this flares interface is a different slant on texturing.
I had, originally, created a flattened sphere. Instead of selecting a color and texture I chose a group of flare options which include the flare itself and the accompanying rings and stars. Each can have different colors, sizes, and complexity. This switched the object color to the vertex points, placing one or more flares at each vertex.
The result is this fat conglomerate of flares each of which looks spherical because of the size, transparency, and other settings. Each flare then becomes an interface button.

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