My youngest turned eight a few weeks ago and insisted on having a YouTube themed birthday party. It’s hard to make a party “YouTube” themed without incorporating a few other social media outlets as well. My daughter and her friends are addicted to Snapchat filters and share silly pictures of themselves all weekend. It’s absolutely hilarious to see some of their silly snaps back and forth.
What does a YouTube birthday party look like??? Great question and one that I had to create on my own with her suggestions. We had a selfie station, took a “Try not to laugh” challenge, and opened mystery boxes. Plus there were lots of emojis and YouTube was playing in the background all day.
Confessions and Rules: Yes, my eight year old has an iPhone. Yes, she is on Snapchat. Yes, we monitor her account and she’s only allowed to share snaps with her friends and family. No, she’s not allowed to post to her story or friend anyone she doesn’t know.
…and both of my kids have YouTube channels of their own. My son’s channel (Zer0 Linxus) is all about video games that I don’t personally approve of…..Black Ops and other war related games. My daughter’s channel (PrincessBaiBoo) is much more age appropriate and shows her playing Roblox. She’s addicted to all things YouTube and even wanted her cake to be a DanTDM theme. She seriously watches Dan so much that I think he’s her older brother in Britain. She knows everything about him, his wife Jemma and their 2 pugs. If you need a new YouTube channel for you kids to watch he’s very kid-friendly, doesn’t cuss, and talks about Minecraft, Roblox, and Pokemon Go.
I seriously have the most talented friend who makes our cakes for us every year! She did such a great job on this one.
…ok, back to the party! I stumbled across this video originally posted by PicMonkey on how to make a Snapchat Geofilter and just had to do a little more research. Snapchat isn’t very clear about how much their Geofilters cost. I did a quick search on Google and found that the rates vary based on the size of your location range. For a small location range (like an address) the price is around $10-15 for a day. You’ll have the chance to review the charges before they are processed.
Video on How to Make a Snapchat Geofilter with PicMonkey
Some things to consider when making your Geofilter:
- What color will show up best for your event? Think about the location of your event and the colors of the walls and clothing. Will white text show up best? Will black text show up best? I actually tested this by taking a picture of my daughter in the living room (we held the party at the house) and added the draft Geofilter art on top of that. We tried a few different color combinations until we found one that we liked. We chose red and yellow for the artwork.
- Placement of text or graphics on artwork. Since this is a Geofilter it’s a filter you apply to a snap AFTER you’ve taken the picture. Therefore you don’t get to see the filter when you are taking the photo. We placed the text at the bottom of the screen so it wouldn’t interfere with any of their faces.
- There is a whole slew of submission guidelines to consider, you’ll want to make sure you review the guidelines before creating a cool graphic that you fall in love with. No logos, no trademarks, no photographs, no phone numbers, no user names, no hashtags, only two lines of text, etc. (See the full submission guidelines)
- Graphic size and file size. 1080px wide by 1920px high. Under 300KB saves as a .PNG file with a transparent background.
- Keep the message & graphic simple! Ours simply said “2017 – Happy Birthday Bailey!”
Once you have a simple geofilter made on PicMonkey it’s time to submit it to Snapchat for approval. The approval process could take 2-3 days, but I got a reply in less than an hour. It was approved and we didn’t have to re-submit or make any changes.
When you submit your Geofilter you’ll need to submit the following information:
- Artwork (see specifics for file size above)
- Location. You’ll be able to enter an address on a map and select anywhere between 20 thousand and 5 million square feet in area. The location for our Geofilter had to include the few houses around us to meet the 20 thousand square feet minimum.
- Date and time you want your Geofilter to be active. I started ours a few hours before the party so we could play around with it and it ended at the end of the day.
- Payment information. You’ll need to enter your credit card info when you submit your Geofilter for approval. You’ll get the chance to reject if at the end if the cost comes back and is too expensive.
The day of her party we were ready to have her and her friends Snapchat one another. The kids were too busy being kids to even realize that I created this fun filter for them. They never got on their phones (or their parents phones) during the party. I’m totally ok with the fact that eight year olds were too busy having fun to check Snapchat. I think we could learn a lot from them when we have friends and family in the same room with us. Don’t worry, I was able to take a few fun pictures using Snapchat and her filter and shared them with the other parents. It was fun to create and would be a great addition for a bridal party, wedding, baby shower, adult birthday party, retirement party, or other special events. I’m really surprised that more businesses and special events don’t use the On-Demand Geofilters for their events. They really aren’t that expensive or hard to make.
…maybe we’ll make one for our Super Bowl party in a few weeks!!!
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