Lovely’s Trading Cards

Last year the Alliance of Therapy Dogs sent an email with information about ordering trading cards for our therapy dogs.  I looked at the website but the cards were designed for groups that visit, with only one photo of each dog.  That didn’t interest me at all, since I have multiple therapy dogs and LOTS of great photos of each. We go to Tongue River Elementary School (grades pre-kindergarten through 5th) every Monday.  I wanted to do trading cards to give to the kids who participate in Reading Dogs as well as the kids who write letters to the Reading Dogs, enclosing one in each letter the dogs write back to the kids on their personalized stationery.  Since most of the kids read to the dogs every month of the school year, I wanted a lot of different trading cards so they could collect them and – of course – trade them with friends.

So I sent the info on the commercial trading cards to my artistic friend, Teresa, at Epiphany Printing, and asked her if we could design our own.  She said, of course, so I began choosing photos.  Then covid hit.  Epiphany shut down, and even when it reopened on a limited basis it didn’t hire back all the staff.  The ones who stayed – especially my two creative friends (Teresa, who has done my therapy dog posters and Wendy, who is doing GloryToo’s books for the Reading Dog participants) – were buried with work and my projects were pushed aside.  

We got Berakah’s trading cards done last spring, just in time to give them to the kids before school got out.  This summer we finished the trading cards for Lovely and GloryToo.  Each has a special color scheme that will be used in their books as well as their trading cards.  

The nursing home residents always enjoy stories of what the kids do at Reading Dogs, so I enclose a trading card in the weekly letters I write  – 6 letters to residents (3 at each nursing home), one to the Alzheimer’s Unit at one nursing home, and one to a shut in. 

We’re printing them a little larger than normal trading card size so that both the very young and the elderly can enjoy the photos and explanations. 

The last picture shows what is on the back of each card.

Because, unfortunately, people steal things off the internet, these photos have “sample” printed on them, though the ones I give out do not.