Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Minecraft Birthday Party, Pt. 1

Once again I have neglected my blog for months.  I thought having a blog would be much easier than writing in my journal. My hands ached before I could finish writing about the events in my family's lives so many entries in my journal abruptly end. I thought using a computer would be quicker and help keep me on track - but it looks like the problem lies with me and not really my achy hands. I do love to look back on my life through my journals and reflect. I love remembering the good times and seeing how Jesus has always brought me through the tough trials of my life. Sometimes I read what I wrote and I think "that was dumb or I miss those moments." Unfortunately, I usually write when I'm in angst so there are many more tales of woe than the happy-rainbow stories. For 2013 I am determined to keep up with my blog and be more productive.

This past December we had a Minecraft birthday party for my son. He is a total Minecraft geek. I do not know how to play this game so I had zero ideas on how to have a Minecraft b-day party. One day when he was at school I tried playing Minecraft to get some ideas and it was beyond me. The character just walked around and I didn't know what to do. I built a wall but I could not figure out the purpose of the game. The same thing happened when I tried to play Halo. I just walked along a beach and around the space ship.  There was no one to fight. I don't understand these games. I'll take Tetris, Pac Man or Diner Dash any day.  However, I did learn from playing Minecraft is that everything is in a cube form.

I searched the internet, Pinterest, and Tumblr and I didn't really find any great ideas on Minecraft parties. The game is little more obscure than Legos or Disney themed parties.  It seemed to me that many parents were also lacking ideas. So far the only idea I could come up with was making creeper party bags. It only required green bags and black construction paper. I was wracking my brain  Then one day I came across The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Papercrafts.  There are downloads of the characters, tools, weapons, and items in the game. He has instructions also how to fold the paper and make the cubes which come out to be approximately between 1-3" inches.  All it requires is paper, printer, and adhesive. Because we were having the party at Amazing Jake's I knew the little paper boxes would not work well and get crushed. But an idea started to form in my head and I decided I could make Steve's head with the free download.

This requires a square box or cube and patience. I also made this using Word. At The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Papercrafts I downloaded Steve.  This download has Steve's entire body so I cropped out everything but the head. You will need to keep the original of Steve's head because you will be cropping it several times. On Steve's head I took the front side (with the eyes) and cropped out the rest and sized it to match as close as possible to the size of the box on one side. It should be a square (see pic below). I proceeded to this with the left and right side of Steve's head. On the opposite side I decided to put the his face again instead of hair. By this time I was running out of ink so I decided to use brown paper for the top of the head instead of printing it out.  I also printed on cardstock paper because it is more durable and the glue will less likely bleed through.


Left side, face, and right side of Steve's head.
Score the sides before gluing to the box. 
Using Crayola Twistables I colored in the white edges before I glued the side pieces.
Luckily I had brown cardstock on hand and didn't have to run out to the craft store.
The cardstock wasn't a perfect match but no one noticed. 

For the Creeper I bought green bags from Michael's (using 40% discount coupon) and cut out squares from black construction paper.  Glue the squares to form the Creeper face.

This is a picture from the game.  This is what Steve actually looks like which is exactly the same as the download. The Creeper is in the background. 

A special thanks to BenBurge at The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Papercraft!


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