Candy Coloring Pages

Candy is the one subject where every color in the box is allowed at once. These candy coloring pages start with sweets you could hold in your hand and end in a land made entirely of them.

The sweets themselves come first. A little girl holds a swirl lollipop as tall as she is, a glass jar tips over and spills wrapped sweets across a counter, a gumball machine stands full to the dome, a bowl is heaped with faceted hard candies, and a stack of chocolate bars lies broken into squares. A caramel apple drips over its stick with chopped nuts stuck to it, a tray of cupcakes wears tall swirls of frosting, a stand holds tiers of macarons and jelly beans, and a candy shop lines up open crates of sweets sorted by shape. A donkey pinata waits in its paper fringe, a girl blows a bubblegum bubble bigger than her face, and a hand holds a cotton candy cone above a fairground crowd.

Then the animals who got to the sweets first: a bear hugging a lollipop bigger than its head, a mouse asleep in an unwrapped candy wrapper, a kitten batting a toffee across the kitchen floor, a fox carrying a tray of ribbon candy, a squirrel dragging a candy cane through the snow, a bunny peeking out of a paper cone of jelly sweets, a hedgehog with candies caught in its spines, and a smiling cupcake on a plate. And the candy land: a candy cane forest with gumdrop bushes, a chocolate river past marshmallow boulders, a hot air balloon shaped like a wrapped sweet over gumdrop hills, a chocolate train carrying jelly beans, and a candy cottage with gumdrop tiles and a lollipop garden. For a slower hour, a peppermint and toffee mandala, a pattern of lollipops and wrapped sweets, and a border of candy canes and bows.

Why candy canes are striped and lollipops swirl

Candy canes have been made since at least the 1600s, and the story told most often is that a choirmaster in Cologne bent sugar sticks into a crook to keep children quiet during a long Christmas service. The red stripes came much later, around 1900; the first canes were plain white. The swirl of a lollipop comes from the same trick as the stripes: two ropes of colored sugar are twisted together while soft, then wound into a spiral.

That gives a good coloring rule for both. Pick two colors, never more, and alternate them strictly along the stripe or the spiral. A red and white cane, a pink and white lollipop, a green and yellow one: it is the discipline of the alternation that makes them look like candy and not like a rainbow.

Making sweets look shiny

Hard candy, lollipops and gumballs are glossy, and gloss on paper is just a small patch of white. Before coloring each round sweet, decide where the light comes from, top left for example, and leave a small white curve or dot on that side of every one. Color the rest, a little darker on the opposite edge. On the gumball machine that means dozens of small white dots, and it is exactly what makes the glass dome look full.

Chocolate is the opposite: it is matte. Color it in a warm brown with even pressure and no highlight, and add a darker brown on the edges of each square where the bar breaks.

Sweets for small hands, jars for patient ones

Candy pages split in two. A few keep one sweet or one character large on the page, and a child of three or four can finish them before the crayons roll off the table. Quick to color, above the grid, gathers those:

• Cute cupcake on a plate
• Bear hugging a big lollipop
• Girl holding a giant lollipop

A good share of the rest are crowded on purpose: a jar of wrapped sweets, a bowl of faceted candies, a tray of cupcakes where every swirl of frosting is its own shape. They suit an older child or an adult who likes filling small spaces. Lots of detail opens on:

• Tray of frosted cupcakes
• Peppermint and toffee mandala
• Bowl of hard candies

Sweets from around the world

Several of these candies carry a place with them. Cotton candy was sold as "fairy floss" at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, spun by a machine a dentist helped invent, which is a joke every parent enjoys. The pinata is a party tradition in Mexico, filled with candy and broken open with a stick. Macarons are French, marshmallows were first made from the root of a plant called the marsh mallow, and gumball machines began in American shops at the start of the 1900s. A child who colors the pinata and the macarons can be asked where each one comes from, and the set becomes a small trip around the world.

A candy land board game

The candy land pages can be turned into a real game. Color the candy cane forest, the chocolate river, the gumdrop hills, the candy cottage and the chocolate train, cut them out and lay them in a winding line across a table. Draw a path of colored squares between them on a long strip of paper, and use a die and a button for each player. The first one to reach the cottage wins.

For a birthday party, the pinata and the cupcakes go to the birthday table, the gumball machine suits a party bag, and the lollipop girl makes an easy card with a message on the stick.

Printing a sweet shop

Every page is a free PDF at 300 dpi, laid out for A4. On A4 print at actual size; on US Letter, pick "fit to page", which shrinks the drawing by about six percent. The printing guide walks through the option. Tap Add to pack on each sweet you want and they print together. The ice cream coloring pages, the gingerbread coloring pages and the food coloring pages have more treats to go with these.