Uncle Sam Craft - Free Paper Puppet Template & SVG

Make an Uncle Sam craft from paper and turn it into a fun puppet 4th of July craft for kids! If you love this free SVG and PDF template, you’ll want to try this koala craft too. This post contains affiliate links.

Uncle sam craft template puppet hero image

There’s nothing like an adorable Uncle Sam craft to celebrate the 4th of July and this one is just too cute! Have you ever seen the good old U.S. look so friendly before?

To make this Uncle Sam craft more accessible to everyone, there’s a free template to go with it. This includes a PDF template to hand cut and assemble your parts, as well as an SVG for all you Cricut crafters out there…

Turn Uncle Sam into a stick puppet by gluing a craft stick to the back. Turn him into a finger puppet either by tracing the entire thing and gluing it back to back, leaving space only for your finger. Or, you can simply glue a ring of paper the size of your finger to the back.

While this friendly paper Uncle Sam craft was designed to be a puppet, you can also make him for more crafts:

Glue him to the front of a wine bag if you’re being hosted for an Independence Day BBQ
Make him in small for place cards
If you’re really ambitious, try making this template really huge as an Uncle Sam poster
Use the template with iron-on materials to make a fun 4th of July t-shirt

Download the Uncle Sam Craft template

To download, fill out the form below. You’ll be signed up for our free newsletter – unsubscribe at any time in the footer of the emails. I respect your privacy and the law and won’t share your information with anyone.

You’ll receive a ZIP folder with both PDFs and the SVG. The SVG is for using with cutting machines (you’ll be able to adjust sizing, fix colors, duplicate as many shapes as you’ll want). The PDF is ready to print, trace, and cut by hand. If you need help, this article can help you unzip your file (it’s really easy once you learn).

What you need

How to make an Uncle Sam puppet craft

1. Select a colored craft paper for the Uncle Sam puppet’s skin tone – however you’d like to make it! Also select red, blue, white, grey and brown colored craft papers for the puppet. Trace and cut out the template patterns from the selected colored craft papers. You can do this using the SVG file on your Cricut as well.

2. Take the shirt and bow cutouts. Glue the small round cutout in the middle of the bow pattern and cut slits along the yellow marked lines of the shirt pattern. Fold the slit-parts inside to form the collar of the shirt.

3. Glue the paper bow to the paper shirt, between the collar patterns.

4. Glue the tux pattern on the top of the shirt pattern.

5. Glue the hand cutouts to the sleeve cutouts and then glue the sleeves on to both sides of the tux pattern.

6. Glue the strip cutouts on to the pants cutout.

7. Glue the shoe cutouts to the bottom side of the pants pattern.

8. Glue the pants pattern on to the bottom of the tux pattern.

9. Cut a slit along the yellow marked lines on the hair pattern, slide the top of the head cutout from front to back into the slit. Attach the hat border to the hat cutout.

10. Glue the star cutouts on to the hat border. Glue the hair and head cutouts together using craft glue.

11. Glue the hat pattern on to the top of the head pattern. Glue the beard cutout (triangular shape) on to the bottom of the head pattern – so that the top is a bit above the edge.