Shopkins Coloring Pages

Everything in the kitchen cupboard has a face here. These Shopkins coloring pages are full of the little shopping characters that made the toy line famous: things you would find in a grocery store, a bathroom cabinet or a handbag, each with big eyes, rosy cheeks and a life of its own.

The food characters take up most of the aisle. A cupcake stands on a stack of cake tins, an apple sits in a basket of pears and plums, a teapot pours tea into a smiling teacup on a lace doily, and a strawberry in knee pads rides a skateboard down a half-pipe. A donut relaxes on a beach towel, a milk carton jumps into a bowl of cereal, a watermelon slice holds an umbrella in the rain, a popcorn box watches a film from a cinema seat, and a double scoop cone melts in the sun while ants march past. A soda bottle chills in an ice bucket, a mustached pizza slice skateboards across the kitchen, a bunch of grapes rides in a wagon, a muffin peeks out of a lunchbox and a pineapple naps in a hammock between palm trees. A cookie waves from a glass of milk, a cheese wedge sits beside its grater, a taco shares the table with a bowl of rice, buttered toast leans on a jar of jam, bananas lie on a picnic blanket and a tall stack of pancakes drips with syrup.

The rest of the shop joins in: a lipstick poses at a mirror ringed with lights, two sneakers run through the park, a soap bar and a sponge share a bubble bath, a toothbrush and a toothpaste tube wait by the sink, a handbag and a high heel go out walking, a cactus in sunglasses sunbathes on the windowsill, a kettle whistles next to a row of mugs, and a flower pot waters its little potted friends. The busiest pages show a market stall of smiling fruit, a birthday cake surrounded by a crowd of tiny characters, a shopping cart overflowing in a grocery aisle, and a swirly lollipop taking a bow on stage.

What Shopkins are

Shopkins are tiny collectible toys made by the Australian company Moose Toys, first sold in 2014. Each one is an everyday object turned into a character: a piece of fruit, a bakery treat, a cleaning product, a shoe, a bottle of nail polish. They live in a town called Shopville, and they were sold in small blind packs and baskets, so part of the fun was never knowing which ones were inside. Children traded doubles in the playground and kept checklists of the ones they still needed, and the characters came with rarities, from common to ultra rare.

The drawings here follow that idea rather than a checklist: ordinary things from the shop and the kitchen, given a face and something to do. That makes the collection easy to add to at home. Any object in the room can become a new character on the back of the page.

Colors that look like the shop

Shopkins are bright and candy colored, and the fun is in making each object look like itself and cute at the same time:

• Bakery: pink and cream icing, golden cake, rainbow sprinkles.
• Fruit: red strawberries with yellow seeds, green and pink watermelon, purple grapes, a yellow pineapple with green leaves.
• Drinks and dairy: white milk cartons with a blue or pink label, a brown cola, a yellow cheese with orange holes.
• Faces: rosy pink circles on the cheeks, which is the one detail every Shopkins character shares.

Pastels work beautifully across a whole page, and a single bright color on the character itself makes it jump out from a pale background.

Little shapes and full aisles

Most characters are one big rounded shape with a face in the middle, which is ideal for young children: a big area to fill and a face to finish at the end. The pages with one character and little around it are listed under Quick to color, above the grid:

• Toast and jam
• Donut at the beach
• Beach ball in shades

The busy pages fill the frame with crates, shelves, candles and crowds of tiny friends. Lots of detail begins with:

• Pineapple in a hammock
• Grocery cart
• Flower pot friends

Play shop with the finished pages

Shopkins were made for playing shop, and the pages can do the same. Color a handful, cut the characters out along a rough line, and stick them on small squares of card: they become price tags, play money for a toy till, or a shopping list for a pretend trip to the store. Older children can draw their own character from something in the house (a sock, a spoon, a bottle of shampoo) and give it a name and a rarity. A stack of finished pages also makes a good theme for a birthday party table, with the birthday cake page at the top of the pile.

Printing a trip to Shopville

Every page is a free A4 PDF drawn at 300 dpi. A4 prints at full size, and on US Letter "fit to page" shrinks the drawing by about six percent so every face and sprinkle stays on the paper. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack puts a whole shopping list of pages into one file. More cute characters are in the kawaii coloring pages and the L.O.L. Surprise coloring pages, and more treats in the food coloring pages and the cupcake coloring pages.