Cheap Jumbo Building Blocks

Annoyance can generate creativity. “Fuck this, I want something better/cheaper/stronger/whatever.” “Surely, there’s a better option.” Yeah, that.

Seeing a price tag of $20 for a set of 24 jumbo building blocks is rather annoying. At the core, these are bits of paper. They may be colored and look cute, but there’s nothing magic about them.

So, I made em myself with the help of my daughter.

Materials needed:

• Used juice boxes (or milk cartons or anything with that tougher outer layer that you’ll find with cartons used for holding liquid)
• Wrapping paper. I received several neat sheets in the mail from a nonprofit, so I used those. Didn’t cost me a penny. Scraps of wrapping paper that are too small to really be useful but you can’t bring yourself to throw away are also perfect.
• Scissors
• Tape

Steps:

• Clean the juice boxes and let them dry. I accumulated juice boxes on my kitchen counter at each meal until I got around to doing the project. “Cleaning” doesn’t have to be an intense step here.
• If you’re just going with a basic block, wrap it with tape like for a holiday gift.
• If you’re going for bigger blocks, tape boxes together and proceed to wrap.

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This wrapping paper needs surgery.[/caption]

This should prove to be an easy project. This has the added benefit of helping teach little ones how to wrap things in advance of the holiday season. On the silly side, they may decide to ‘doctor’ the block in the process (see image at right of my daughter using her doctors’ equipment on one block).

My daughter loves the Trader Joe’s juice, so these are the boxes I used. I found that with boxes that size, putting four of them together made for a really good size block, almost as big as the ones for sale in the link mentioned at the top of this article. Even if a certain size catches your eye before beginning the project, try out a few shapes. The stability of the block once it’s wrapped may lead you down another road. I had initially thought about blocks the size of a single juice box, but by the end, those bigger blocks seemed better for building really big stuff that my daughter would enjoy knocking down.

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Four boxes taped together yields a very stable, good size block.[/caption]

As an added perk, if your kids destroy these things, they cost a whole, what, $1 to make? The boxes were going to be thrown away. You may include the cost of the wrapping paper, but if you have spare bits laying around, even that is minimal. The tape costs a little bit, but you shouldn’t have to use a whole lot to get a few blocks and see if those get used. This is an easy project for feeling ‘craftsy’ without needing a crazy assortment of stuff, and there’s very little mess.

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Several size blocks with little effort.[/caption]