If you’re planning a Minecraft birthday party, the decorations are where you can really have some fun bringing the Minecraft world to life! And the best part? You don’t need to spend a fortune on store-bought decorations to make your party look amazing. For our Minecraft party, I made a bunch of DIY decorations inspired by the game—from Minecraft blocks and Creepers to TNT and other fun details that made the whole party feel like we had stepped right into the Minecraft world.
In this post, I’m sharing all of the DIY Minecraft party decorations I made, along with the details you’ll need to recreate them for your own party. Some are surprisingly simple, and a few take a little more time, but they’re all totally worth it when you see everything come together! Whether you’re planning a Minecraft birthday party for a little Minecraft fan or just looking for some creative Minecraft party ideas, I hope these decorations give you plenty of inspiration for your own celebration. So let me break it down into a few different elements, starting with the backdrop.
DIY Minecraft Backdrop
There are lots of backdrops you can purchase, or even some fun large creeper face type backdrops people make with paper plates. But again, I wanted it to feel like we were in the Minecraft world. That meant dirt & grass blocks, sky, clouds, trees, and some of those iconic characters walking around. My favorite thing to work with when creating large backdrops is plastic tablecloths. You can get them in any color, cut them however you’d like, layer them, and they are lightweight, cheap and easy to hang. Checks all the boxes! So I ordered the colors I needed to create the Minecraft world including: light blue, green & brown. You’ll need a few of each color, depending on how much area you’re trying to cover.
The first thing I did was hang the brown tablecloths along the bottom third or so of my wall. I just hung it so it hit the ground (barely) and secured it with my favorite sticky tack. I had to use two tablecloths to cover the entire length of the wall. You might think to hang the green ones up next, but it may work better to actually hang the light blue along the ceiling for the sky. Hang it along the entire length of the wall, and now you should have a gap between the brown and blue where you can see the wall. This is where you will hang the green tablecloths, so they are somewhat overlapping the brown, again along the entire length of the wall. The last step for this part is to get some scissors and cut out some rectangular shaped pieces from your green to reveal more of the brown in some spots (see image above). This will give it the “grass block” Minecraft effect. You can see a video of me cutting the tablecloth and making the backdrop below:
DIY Minecraft Trees
The next thing I wanted for the back drop was some Minecraft Trees. I got the idea of making them out of square paper plates when I saw so many people doing the creeper faces that way. Since everything in the Minecraft world is pixelated the square plates make a great “building block”. I imagine there’s all kinds of things you could create with them from the Minecraft world. I chose to attempt some trees, so I googled some pictures of Minecraft trees and tried my best to copy them. I just used a little duct tape on the back of each plate to adhere it to the plastic tablecloths. I used this pack of brown plates and this pack of green plates to create the multi colored trees. And here is my viral video of me creating the trees. I also cut some Minecraft looking clouds out of white cardstock and poster board to add to the sky.
The finishing touch was creating a happy birthday banner using the backs of some of the plates as well as the black plates. I used my cricut to cut the letters in the Minecraft font and glued them on to the paper plates. Again, the paper plates are the perfect size and shape to create so many things- it’s really limitless!
DIY Minecraft Characters
The centerpiece of our Minecraft backdrop was the characters I created out of cardboard boxes. We had: Steve, a creeper, a pig and some grass and TNT blocks. I hate to spend money on cardboard boxes when they are delivered to my house nearly daily, but I really wanted uniform boxes that were specifically 12X12 so I did buckle down and order these boxes. I would still save whatever boxes you can while preparing for this party. You’ll need a few different options and sizes if you want to make all of these characters. In fact I never could find or get boxes the right size for Steve’s arms, so he has little T-Rex arms ;).
For the Creeper I used 4 cardboard boxes (the head is an Eggo box from Costco) and wrapped them all in this green paper. The creeper face I cut with my cricut and I have the cut file saved for you in my Minecraft Digital Party Pack. And you can see a video of me putting the creeper together here.
Minecraft Steve Step-by-Step
Materials: 3 12×12 boxes, cardstock in light blue, dark blue, tan, brown, and pink, cutting machine
- To make Steve, I started with the head taping one 12×12 boxes closed and covering it with tan cardstock on 4 sides ( no need to cover the back or bottom of his head). Add hair with dark brown cardstock, eyes, mouth and nose
- For his torso I taped one of the boxes with the flaps open and covered the three sides with the lighter blue. Add skin to top of torso.
- For his legs I again taped a box with the flaps open and covered the box with dark blue cardstock. I then added the lighter blue to the bottom for his feet and used a sharpie to draw a line down the middle for his “legs”
- I used duct tape to tape the 3 boxes together. Then good luck finding matching boxes for the arms. I used what I could scrounge up covered it in his skin color and then the blue and taped on as well.
I have cut files for his face and hair in my Minecraft Digital Party Pack (add to cart with the button above). And you can check out a video of the process of making Steve here.
The pig was a little more tricky to make as you need a variety of size boxes. I ended up getting pretty creative with it wrapping things like kraft mac & cheese boxes that were still full for the legs and random things around my house that I could find that were approximately the right size. I just covered everything in pink cardstock and assembled with duct tape.
DIY Grass & TNT Blocks
For the grass blocks I kept the 12X12 boxes as they were and covered just the top with the green paper. I then used scissors to cut out the chunks to make it look pixelated.
For the TNT blocks I covered all the sides of the 12X12 boxes with red cardstock (except the bottom) and then cut strips of white cardstock that I glued along 3 sides (not the top, bottom or back). Then I cut the letters “TNT” with my cricut in the Minecraft font and added those to the white strips. The nice thing about using 12X12 boxes is you can use 12X12 cardstock to cover a whole side. I then displayed them in a little pyramid with the pig on top.
Minecraft Tablescape Ideas
Now that our backdrop is complete, let’s move on to the table! The table I kept pretty simple and believe it or not I used this Minecraft tablecloth (I know, a bit off brand for me to use licensed products, I usually make my own!) but it really was perfect and I jazzed it up by adding the faux grass table runner down the middle. For the centerpieces I used these small grass blocks (could be fun to use as party favors with things inside too!) with these Minecraft characters on top.
As you can see from the photo above the centerpiece of the table was the awesome grass block cake that my mother in law made. Isn’t it incredible? She used a cookie crumb coating to make the dirt on the sides and green frosting on top for the grass.
For the place settings we used these plates along with their own potion. The printables for the potions are included in my Minecraft Digital Party Pack.
Minecraft Party Food
Our food table really fell under the “decor” category, so I’ll include details about it here in this post. I was quite proud of this idea, I will admit. In the Minecraft game there is something called the “hunger bar”. Similar to the life bar that shows you how much life you have left, there is a bar that shows how hungry you are. They are little chicken leg icons, and the more grayed out ones there are the hungrier you are. I set up the food table in the dining room and above it I hung the “hunger bar” showing a sufficient level of hunger that our little players would need to fuel up. Then below the hunger bar banner (included in the Minecraft Digital Party Pack) was a table of foods and items from the game. We included: watermelon (melon), goldfish crackers (fish), chicken strips (cooked chicken), pretzels (sticks), apples and carrots. And then a variety of “potions” (kool aids with the potion lables). The thing that really ties it all together is the printable food labels that are included in my party pack. You can see a video of all the foods here. The only thing missing is the chicken strips, since we put those out when it was time to eat I didn’t get a picture of it.
That about covers it for our Minecraft party decorations. For all the details on our party games and activities, including a full party quest that makes you feel like you’re inside the video game, check out this post. And for a shopping list of everything you need for these DIY decorations keep scrolling down!
Minecraft Digital Party Pack
While it did take me hours and hours to create all of these printables for my son’s party- lucky for you they are now all ready to go for your party! And I made some tweaks to them based on some things I learned doing this for my son’s party. The printables include things to help you with decor and the party activities (the big quest). I will say: The quest is somewhat complex so I do not recommend it for kids under 8. You could modify it and do a simpler version, however, if you are doing this for younger kids. You can purchase all 30+ pages of these printables that will be delivered to you as a google drive link by adding to cart below.
Shopping List
- Plastic tablecloths for backdrop
- Brown paper plates
- Green paper plates
- 12X12 boxes
- Green paper (for creeper and grass blocks)
- Blue cardstock (for Steve)
- Red cardstock (for TNT blocks)
- Minecraft tablecloth
- Small grass blocks (for centerpiece)
- Minecraft centerpiece characters
- Minecraft plates