Strawberry Shortcake Coloring Pages

Strawberry Shortcake is the rare character a grandmother and a granddaughter both know, and that makes her a good one to color side by side. These Strawberry Shortcake coloring pages follow her through a year in the berry patch: picking, baking, sharing and napping, always under that enormous hat.

The garden is where most of the pages start. She waters a row of strawberry plants, picks berries under an arch of vines, pulls a wagon stacked with crates, weeds in a straw hat while a ladybird waits on a leaf, and plants seedlings in a window box. She blows a dandelion across the field, skips along stepping stones, sits on a fence rail with her cat, and kneels to smell a flower with the bees. The kitchen comes next: piping cream onto a layered shortcake, rolling dough while the cat watches from a stool, stirring a big pot of jam, decorating a cake with swirls of icing, stacking a tower of cupcakes with a friend, and filling the pantry shelves with jars in the middle of winter. Then the sharing: a picnic with a jug of berry lemonade, a tea party under a striped awning, a tiered cake carried to the table, a pony cart full of friends, a ring of friends dancing around the patch, and paper lanterns hung for a garden party. Quieter pages show her asleep under a big leaf, napping in a hammock, wrapped in a knitted blanket with her cat, swinging under blossom and splashing through puddles. A strawberry mandala and a border of strawberries and cupcakes finish the set.

A character who started on a greeting card

Strawberry Shortcake was first drawn at the end of the 1970s for American Greetings cards. The dolls came right after, and they were famous for one thing: each one smelled of the dessert in her name. Her friends were named the same way, Blueberry Muffin, Orange Blossom, Lemon Meringue, Raspberry Torte, and the whole cast lived in a place called Strawberryland.

Since then she has been redrawn every few years for a new cartoon, from the soft bonnets of the first specials to the bigger eyes and shorter dresses of the later series. That is why a parent and a child may not picture quite the same girl. These drawings sit in between: the huge dotted hat of the originals, the freckles, the patterned dress and the striped stockings every version keeps.

Hat, freckles and stripes: getting her colors right

There is no single correct palette, because every series changed it a little, but a few things never move.

• Her hair is red or strawberry blond, with freckles across her cheeks and nose. A light brown pencil dot by dot makes better freckles than a marker.
• The hat is the signature: pink or red with white dots, and a real strawberry on top, red with green leaves.
• The dress is usually pink or red with a small white pattern, and the apron, when she wears one, stays white or cream.
• The stockings are striped. Red and white is the classic choice; pink and green works too.
• Her cat changes color from one series to the next, so any soft, warm shade is right.

For the berries themselves, use two reds: a bright one all over and a darker one pressed in along one side, then leave the tiny seeds white or touch them with yellow. That little shadow is what makes a flat strawberry look round.

Easy berry pages and busy garden scenes

Young children do best with the pages where she is large on the page and the background stays light: the chibi page inside a giant strawberry, the close portrait with a butterfly, the page where she stands under a strawberry umbrella in the rain. Quick to color, above the grid, lists the fastest:

• Chibi Strawberry Shortcake in a giant strawberry
• A butterfly on her fingertip
• Wrapped in a blanket with her cat

Older children and grown-up fans will want the scenes with a whole setting, the arch of vines heavy with fruit, the pony cart on the flowering lane, the jam kitchen with its utensils. Lots of detail starts with:

• Picking berries under the arch
• A pony cart ride down the lane
• On a swing under the blossom

A little nod to the scented dolls

The original dolls smelled of strawberries, and it is easy to bring that back. Scented markers, the kind where each color has its own fruit smell, are sold in most stores, and the red one is nearly always strawberry. Use it only for the berries and the strawberry on her hat, and the finished page will smell faintly of fruit for days. It is a small thing, but it is the detail that makes a parent who had the dolls smile.

A strawberry party on paper

These pages make most of a Strawberry Shortcake birthday on their own. The border page, with strawberries and cupcakes all around an empty oval, turns into an invitation: write the name, the date and the address in the oval, then color the border. The tea party and picnic pages go at each place on the table as placemats. The baking pages, from the piped shortcake to the pot of jam, make covers for a family recipe folder, with a real strawberry shortcake recipe tucked inside for the day after the party.

Getting the pages out of the printer

Every page downloads as a free A4 PDF drawn at 300 dpi. An A4 printer takes it at full size; a US Letter printer needs "fit to page", which makes the drawing about six percent smaller and keeps the whole hat on the sheet. The printing guide shows where that option hides. Add to pack under several pages gathers them into one file for a party table. Soft, sweet characters continue in the Care Bears coloring pages and the My Little Pony coloring pages, and the bakery pages pair well with the cupcake coloring pages and the fruit coloring pages.