Giving wrapped flexbox items vertical spacing

I've recently been playing with Flexbox for the first time and, in general, it's absolutely amazing. I've encountered an issue recently however, where I cannot seem to give flex items that are wrapping any vertical spacing.

I've tried using:

align-content: space-between;

but this doesn't seem to do anything. From the reading I've done, this would only seem to work if my flex container is taller than the elements contained within (is this right?) If so, then would I not have to set a height for my flex-container, which would seem to defeat the purpose of using flexbox?

The only way I can think of to make this work would be to give bottom margin to the elements within, but again this seems to defeat the purpose.

Hopefully I'm missing something fairly obvious - here's a link to a codepen: http://codepen.io/lordchancellor/pen/pgMEPz

Also, here's my code:

HTML:

<div class="container">
   <div class="col-sm-12">
     <h1>Flexbox Wrapping</h1>

     <div class="flexContainer">
       <div class="flexLabel">This is a flex label</div>
                    
       <a class="btn btn-primary">Button 1</a>
       <a class="btn btn-warning">Button 2</a>
       <a class="btn btn-success">Button 3</a>
     </div>
   </div>
 </div>

CSS:

.flexContainer {
  display: flex;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
  align-items: center;
  align-content: space-between;
  justify-content: center;
}
.flexContainer .flexLabel {
  flex-basis: 150px;
  flex-shrink: 0;
}

EDIT - Just going to add a little more detail here, as I'm not sure I'm putting it across well enough.

In my larger project, I have some block level elements that are arranged in a row using flexbox. However, there needs to be some responsiveness as the user may reduce the screen width. At this point, I want my elements to begin to stack (hence the wrap). However, as the elements begin to stack, they are all touching vertically, where I want there to be spacing.

It's beginning to look like top and bottom margins may be the only way to resolve this - however I was wondering if there was a flexbox-centric way to achieve this.

I had a similar issue and I used the following hack to solve the issue.

    /* add a negative top-margin to the flex container */
.flexContainer {
        /* ... your existing flex container styles here */
    margin: -10px 0 0 0;
} 
    /* add a corresponding positive top margin to all flex items (all direct children of the flex container) */
.flexContainer > * {
    margin-top: 10px;
}

For the top row of flex items the negative and positive margins cancel out, for the subsequent rows it adds the margin between the rows (in this case 10px between rows).

It's less than elegant but it gets the job done.

If you force wrapping by applying a width you can then use margins as you normally would without setting a height.

.flexContainer {
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
  justify-content: center;
  background: pink;
  width: 150px;
}
.flexContainer > * {
  margin: 1em 0;
}
.flexContainer .flexLabel {
  flex-basis: 150px;
  flex-shrink: 0;
}

<link href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />

<div class="container">
  <div class="col-sm-12">
    <h1>Flexbox Wrapping</h1>

    <div class="flexContainer">

      <div class="flexLabel">This is a flex label</div>

      <a class="btn btn-primary">Button 1</a>
      <a class="btn btn-warning">Button 2</a>
      <a class="btn btn-success">Button 3</a>
    </div>

  </div>
</div>

row-gap would solve your problem

.flexbox {
    display: flex;
    column-gap: 10px;
    row-gap: 10px
}

It's because you don't have a height on your flex content for it to calculate the space-between so at the moment, the flex container is as small as possible. Add a height and it should work.

Another hacky solution is to give the item a bottom border:

border-bottom: 10px solid transparent;