1000 Subscriber Play Build
If you watch a lot of YouTube or have your own channel you may know that when you reach one hundred thousand subscribers YouTube will send you a silver play button award. You also get a gold award at one million, a Dimond at ten million and ruby at fifty million but that one might have been a one-time thing for PewDiePie.
It is not easy to grow on YouTube anymore, with changes to the YouTube partner program and the adpocalypse. So, when I reached out to a few YouTube creators who were about to reach one thousand subscribers, it’s a much smaller milestone but also one that few channels reach.
UnboxingSve is a content creator who does product reviews and uploads a video every week, he thought opening a one thousand subscriber award would be fun on his channel so I agreed to make him one.
This is not really a tutorial because use tools not everyone have to make this play button but I hope it can help you get ideas of how to make your own.
I cut out the basic YouTube play button out of quarter inch MDF, it took like ten passes to get through this dense material. The reason I picked MDF is that it’s cheap and it sands really well so shaping is easy.
I made this in two pieces so I got the right depth and could have the recessed arrow in the middle.
I used wood glue to hold these two pieces together.
You can never have too many clamps.
Using my belt sander and some sandpaper I rounded the corners of the button.
I used several coats of filler primer, it was thick enough that the MDF would not suck it all up and I could build up a surface. I applied three coats and sanded it with 200 grit paper in between the coats.
I used a metallic bronze spray paint for the final coat, I wished it looked cleaner in the center but overall I like how it turned out.
I bought a simple shadow box for the award and using some standoffs I glued the button to the inside of the shadow box.
Lastly, I added some lettering using my vinyl cutter, this took six tries because the blade on my cutter was not in good condition.
I had a great time making this button, MDF is a great material if you need to make something solid with a smooth hard surface. But the downside is the dust leftover is so fine that it gets everywhere.
When UnboxingSve posts his video I will add it to this post, until then go check out his channel on YouTube, when I started the project he had under one thousand subscribers now he is close to twelve hundred.
Check him out here:
UnboxingSve
It was a fun project and I am glad I took it on.