HOW TO: YouTube Thumbnails! 📷

Thumbnails! I've just gone through and updated all my thumbnails because up until recently I'd been using the ones given by YouTube.

I've always wondered: how do YouTubers make your thumbnails? Do they use photos or still shot? Do they have text (the title) or not?

I've been using PicMonkey and using a picture (or 2 or 3) taken from the day. I've loved using and playing around with the overlays feature. I was torn on whether to include the title but I went ahead and did it to add a little pop of colour in some of the thumbnails. Here are a selection of the variety of types I made.

The first one I did was my most recent video from Morocco and it's probably the simplest. I kind of want to go back and start again but I think I've wasted enough time because I've been doing it for the past two days. I took the only picture of all three of us from the holiday and then simply resized it before adding the title in simple black, clear font.

After that, I spent ages on my birthday vlog because I wanted it to be special but I wanted a picture of me in my balloon hat. It took forever and it's not perfect but I'm relatively happy with the result. I had to add a few overlays with the pictures and erasing the background on those took forever especially with the intricate balloon parts. I do now realise that the writing is probably in a too light of a colour but it's pretty fun to brighten it up.
I love this one. It's pretty simple and I just took one picture, added the title and slanted it and put in some cute hearts which match the onesie. But I may be a little bias because it has baby Bop in it.
The very first videos I posted (more so quick clips) were from so long ago, I don't have any good quality images so for them I did something a little different. I just used stills from the YouTube provided thumbnail, added some colours with the title and then used PicMonkey's free stamps to cover in the black sides or repeated the same image in mirrored form to fit the screen.
  
Doing the holiday thumbnails was the most fun. I did the Paris vlogs first and I was super happy with how they turned out! I added a picture in the background and then one of two overlays. I think this one is my favourite where I left a little background to the Eiffel Tower up.
For my Egypt vlogs, I had lots of pictures to choose from so I put a landscape one in the background and then added an overlay. It kind of looks like both these pictures are taken together but in fact, both are two combined. I'm impressed!
 
Granted, this one doesn't quite look as good as I remember thinking it did at first but I'm still impressed. After adding an overlay I messed around with the colour balance for a while because the water show obviously wasn't in the pool but I wanted to put in a colourful background image so after contrasting, brightening and blending I think it turned out really well!
At this point I realised that I could change the colour of the text again so I thought multiple colours fit perfectly with the image and title of this vlog. Unfortunately, I used a still from the vlog so it isn't quite a clear picture but I thought it still looked super cute, bright and fun!
I then put all those skills into one and added a background image, then an overlay image which I blended and contrasted before adding the multicolour title to tie in with the outfits. S Club 7 were always a fun band growing up and that's what their concert was all about so I wanted the thumbnail to reflect that.

I've also made it a little easier to access individual YouTube videos from my blog. On the top of the blog I now have multiple pages. The first has all my blog posts and the second has my YouTube background as well as a list of videos in chronological order. I then have a separate page for Flashback Friday videos, concert videos, daily vlogs and finally holiday vlogs. Some of them repeat but it's just easier for me to split them up this way.

Let me know how you get on! I had lots of fun! :)

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