Printable for Jumbo, Stackable Minecraft Blocks

In March, less than one week before the pandemic lockdown began, I had about 18 kids at my house for a very pre-COVID Minecraft birthday party for my 8-year-old. I made a lot of Minecraft party favors and games, which I hope to someday detail in full, but the coolest thing I made was a bunch of 8-inch cubic Minecraft blocks — 36 to be exact. They were super fun!

These were a party decoration + party toy + birthday present for my son. He wanted 36 because that’s how many he can have in his Minecraft inventory. I made eight different types of blocks (grass, creeper head, wood, sand, diamond ore, brick, stone, and treasure chest). The kids at the birthday party loved them — they built walls, made stacks, and threw the blocks around. Even five months later, we still have ALL THE BLOCKS. The kids build forts and towers with them, and they use small stacks of them as side tables in their rooms!

I made the blocks using 8″ cubic shipping boxes I bought from Amazon, a million full-page shipping labels (okay, 384), and my Canon inkjet printer. I made the graphics for the block faces by downloading the Minecraft skins for each block, sizing the image for each side to 8″ x 8″, putting them in order in a PDF file, and printing all the sides for all of the blocks onto the full-page label paper. Then, my husband and I cut all the printed labels to 8″ x 8″ and carefully stuck the cut labels on the assembled boxes in the right orientation. We assembled the blocks when we had time over the course of about a few weeks. It was time-consuming, but fun!

Since I spent so long designing the block faces for this project, I decided I should share it by selling the printable PDF on Etsy. However, I quickly learned that I can’t sell this product using the original design, since the block skin images are not my intellectual property. So, I did some research on what I could sell, and redesigned these as “Jumbo 8-inch Pixel Mine-Style Blocks.” If you’re interested, you can buy the PDF in my Etsy shop and make some for yourself!

The full instructions to make for these four jumbo 8-inch printable blocks are in the printable PDF. If you have any questions about this project, please let me know!