Adele has been a youth librarian for 20 years. She has learned lots about making crafts easy and inexpensive.

Printable Greeting Cards

Here is a collection of quick-and-easy “Year of the Dog” greeting cards you can print, color and assemble. These fast templates are especially useful for teachers, parents, and librarians who work with preschoolers, kindergarteners, or elementary school children (though some of the designs are sophisticated enough for teens and adults).

How to Use These Templates for Your Craft Projects

I have loaded these images as photos (jpegs). To copy them for printing, you can right-click on them, and then paste them into a program like Microsoft Word or Publisher. Once you have done that, you can enlarge or minimize the images the way you'd like.

You'll notice that many of the greeting cards have big blank spaces on them. Those spaces will be the part of the card that is folded over after you have printed it out.

If you are looking for printable coloring sheets, envelopes or bookmarks, here are more printable templates for Year of the Dog.

Note: Since there are a number of cards projects posted here, I thought I would put a couple of index photos up front. These are pictures of the finished templates, listed in order top to bottom and left to right. These photos will give you an idea of what you can find if you keep scrolling.

Happy New Year Cards (8.5 x 5.5 Inches)

Print these out onto card stock, then fold them over with the dog picture facing out.

Each of these cards has the Chinese characters that say "Happy New Year," along with a pinyin version. Pinyin is a method of using the English alphabet to indicate how the words are pronounced.

Happy New Year Cards (5.5 x 8.5 Inches)

Here are some cards which use different pictures to stand in for the “0” in 2018. Remember that the top is blank because you are going to fold that part over to make your card.

Happy New Year Half-Page Cards

I tried something a little different with these. These cards are arranged 2 to a sheet, and you can print the page on cardstock, and then cut it in half. The dog graphic is at the top, and you can cut it out. For some of the dogs, you need to add ears, which are printed on an additional template. Refer to the sample finished card to see how each one is assembled.

Ears for Oval Dog Card

Sample Square Dog Card

Sample Dog With Ball Card

Many Faces Card

Here is a card printed 2 to a page. I’ve included several dog faces that the children can color.

Cute Dog Card

Here is another version of a New Year's card with a dog face.

Cards With Dog Faces to Cut, Assemble and Paste

The next few cards have a blank spot in the center. You can use the accompanying templates to color, cut, and assemble to fill that blank spot. You can print out the blank template on red (red is a lucky color for the Chinese), and assemble the dog face, then glue it in the center.

Refer to the picture of each sample card to see how these cards are put together.

Blank Greeting-Card Template

Here is a blank template you can print on red card stock for the next few projects.

This template will also serve for another style of card. You can print it out on white card stock, then let the children draw their own dog in the space in the middle.

Sample Happy Dog Card

Dog With Folded Ears

Sample Oval Dog Card

Sample Shar-Pei Card

Sample Chinese Crested Card

Full Page Cards

The rest of these cards are full-page cards, a size which is sometimes a little easier for young hands to work with. Print out the blank template onto red card stock. Then, the child can cut out the dog faces from the templates above and put them in the center of the page. I’ve also included one template here that doesn’t fit on a smaller card. It’s a full-body picture of a Chinese Crested dog.

Blank Template for Full-Page Cards

Sources

The dog shapes and hand-drawn dogs are my own designs; other artwork is under license from istock.com. You may print them for personal or classroom use. Commercial use is prohibited.

© 2017 Adele Jeunette