Birthday colouring page

A two-tier cake with three lit candles, a stack of two gifts and three balloons, printable at actual size.

A two-tier cake sits at the centre of this sheet, the smaller tier resting on the larger one, both of them standing on a round plate whose rim is drawn as a separate line. Three candles rise from the top tier, each with a flame drawn as a small pointed shape. To one side there is a stack of two wrapped gifts, the smaller box on top of the bigger one. Three balloons float above on long curving strings. The whole birthday arrangement is black outline on white.

The tiers are the two biggest open areas on the page and they behave differently. The lower tier is wide and mostly uninterrupted, which makes it the easiest place to try a blended fill or a pattern of stripes. The upper tier is shorter and gets crossed by the candle bases, so it asks for a steadier hand. The balloons are three clean ovals with nothing inside them at all, and the plate shows as a rim around the base of the cake and can stay white without the page looking unfinished.

Candles first is a sensible rule here. The flames are the smallest shapes on the sheet and they sit right against the top tier, so filling them early means you are not steering a wide crayon around them later. Then the balloons, then the gifts, then the cake last, so the largest area is the one you finish on. Pressing hard on the flame shapes tends to push colour past the outline, and on white paper that stray mark is more visible than it would be anywhere else.

Coloured pencil suits the balloons, because a light circular fill with a darker edge makes each one read as round rather than flat. Crayon on the lower tier gives a texture that passes for icing. A marker will make the wrapped boxes look like glossy paper, but the balloon strings are thin enough that a broad tip will swallow them, so switch to a pencil or a gel pen for those. Watercolour pencil, brushed lightly, does something convincing on the three flames.

Icing is often white or pale, so leaving the tiers unfilled and colouring only the plate, candles and gifts is a real option rather than a shortcut. The opposite works too: a cake in three unrelated colours, one per tier and one for the plate. Balloons are the place where nothing is expected of you at all, since a balloon can be any colour anyone has ever made one in. Flames go yellow into orange in the usual reading, though a blue flame is not wrong on paper.

A tiered cake is built a little like a building. The lower layer carries the weight, and a support goes in under the smaller tier so that it does not sink into the one below. Candles are usually pushed in only at the tip, which is why they lean slightly in real life and why a drawn set standing perfectly upright looks a touch formal. The plate here is drawn wider than the cake itself, leaving a visible ring of white all the way around the base.

Print at actual size on plain A4 paper, because fit-to-page shrinks the flames and the balloon strings until they close up. Card is another option if the sheet is going to be handled at a table with food nearby. Printing two copies lets one be coloured and the other be cut apart, since the cake, the gift stack and the balloons are separate enough from each other to become three pieces.

Finished, this one turns into a card with very little extra work: fold a piece of paper, cut out the cake and the balloons, and glue them to the front with a name written underneath. It can also go on a fridge, or be rolled and tied with the same ribbon as an actual present. This sheet is built from separate objects rather than one connected figure, with clear white between the cake, the gifts and the balloons, which is what makes it straightforward to cut up and rearrange.

Published 28 August 2026Updated 28 August 2026685 words