Fairy Coloring Pages

The fairies on these pages are small. Small enough to sleep inside a tulip, to ride a snail, to carry one strawberry between two of them and to use a dewdrop as a mirror. These fairy coloring pages are about that scale, and about the little world it opens up at the bottom of a garden.

A fairy sits on a spotted toadstool, hovers over an open flower, stands on a leaf holding a dewdrop, and falls asleep curled inside a tulip while its petals close. Another rests on a bluebell stem, sits on a crescent moon among the stars, and shelters under a mushroom cap from the rain. There is a portrait too, a fairy's face with pointed ears and a crown of flowers.

The fairies have chores and errands. One waters a seedling from an acorn cup, one sweeps the step of a tiny door in a tree root, one hangs lanterns along a branch and another carries a lantern through the tall grass at night. They cook over a fire in a ring of pebbles, weave baskets from grass stems, sew a dress from petals, wash their clothes in a puddle and peg them on a line, pick blackberries from a bramble, and pot flowers on the windowsill of a tree house. And they play: riding a snail and a dragonfly, paddling a leaf boat, sliding down a curled fern, swinging between two daisies, holding on as a dandelion clock blows away, sharing a walnut with a mouse and sitting beside a robin who is their own size. Three dance inside a fairy ring of toadstools, and three more sleep in a row in an open seed pod. Two fairy houses complete the village: one inside a hollow stump with a round door, one a tower of stacked toadstools with a ladder.

Fairy rings are real

The ring of toadstools the fairies dance in is a real thing. Some mushrooms grow in circles, sometimes many yards across, because the fungus underground spreads outward from a single point and sends up mushrooms at its edge. The grass inside the ring is often a different green.

Nobody knew that for most of history, so people explained the circles as the place where fairies danced at night. Old stories across Britain and Ireland warned children never to step inside one, or they might be pulled into the dance and lose years that felt like minutes. A child who colors the fairy ring page and then finds a real ring on a lawn in autumn tends to remember both.

Why these fairies look like flowers

The idea that fairies are tiny, wear petals and belong to a particular plant is fairly recent. It comes largely from the Flower Fairies books by Cicely Mary Barker, first published in 1923, where every fairy was painted with the real flower, leaf or berry she belonged to, and dressed in it. Older fairies in folk tales were often human-sized and not especially friendly.

That tradition gives an easy way to choose colors. Dress each fairy in the plant she is sitting in: the tulip fairy in the tulip's red or pink, the bluebell fairy in violet blue, the blackberry fairy in purple and green, the fairy in the petal coat in whatever flower the child likes best. The page then looks planned rather than random.

Coloring wings that look light

Wings are the part that decides whether a fairy looks finished. Real insect wings are thin enough to see through, so heavy color makes them look like cardboard. Color each wing panel very lightly, darker near the body and fading almost to white at the outer edge, and leave the lines of the veins uncolored. Two pale colors that blend, lilac into blue, pink into peach, look better than one strong color.

One more trick: let the background show through the wings. If there is a green leaf behind a wing, add a touch of green inside that part of the wing. It takes a few seconds and makes the wing look transparent.

Which pages for which child

The collection sits mostly in the middle: a fairy and one setting, a flower, a teacup, a puddle, drawn with enough detail to last a while without being fiddly. For a child of four or five, the simplest keep the fairy large and alone. Quick to color, above the grid, starts with:

• Fairy hovering over a flower
• Fairies asleep in a seed pod
• Fairy in a teacup

The densest are the fairy village pages, the toadstool tower, the fairy ring and the dragonfly ride over the lily pond, where petals, leaves and wing panels all need their own color. Lots of detail begins with:

• Fairy riding a dragonfly
• Fairy on a swing between flowers
• Fairies dancing in a toadstool ring

A fairy garden, a fairy door and a note from the tooth fairy

Fairy pages have more uses than most. Cut out a colored fairy, cover it front and back with clear tape, glue it to a craft stick and push it into a potted plant: that is the start of a fairy garden. The two fairy house pages show what to build next, a round door at the foot of a stump or a toadstool tower, and a real pebble path or a bottle cap table finishes it.

The fairy sweeping her doorstep and the tiny door in the tree root suit a fairy door project, where a small painted door is glued at the base of a wall or a tree and the children leave notes for whoever lives behind it.

And when a first tooth comes out, a colored fairy tucked under the pillow next to the tooth makes a gentle note from the tooth fairy. The fairy asleep in the seed pod or the fairy on the moon are good choices for that night.

Printing a fairy set

These PDFs are free and drawn for A4 at 300 dpi. On A4, print at full size; on US Letter, choose "fit to page", which makes each fairy about six percent smaller and loses nothing. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack under several pages puts them in one file, handy for a fairy party. The unicorn coloring pages and the princess coloring pages keep the same enchanted mood, and the flower coloring pages have the real plants the fairies live in.