Christmas colouring page

Six separate holiday shapes on one sheet, from holly wreath to jingle bell, free as an A4 PDF.

Six separate objects share this page rather than one scene. There is a holly wreath with a bow tied at its base, a bell hanging by its loop, a candy cane, a wrapped gift with a ribbon crossing it and tied on top, a large five-pointed star, and a second much smaller jingle bell. Nothing overlaps anything else and there is no background, so each object sits on its own patch of white and can be finished on its own. That makes the sheet an easy one to put down between objects and come back to later without losing your place.

With no background holding them together, the shapes can be worked in any order, and there is an argument for saving the wreath until last. Its leaves are the smallest and most numerous shapes on the page, which is why they are easier to leave until the larger pieces are done. The star and the gift are the two big flat areas, so they set the tone; whatever goes on them carries the largest blocks of colour on the page. The candy cane takes almost no time and is a good place to start if you want something finished quickly.

The traditional set is easy to reach for: green leaves and red berries on the wreath, gold on both bells, red and white on the cane, a red or gold star. The gift is where that scheme usually breaks, since wrapping paper can be anything, and the same goes for the ribbon crossing it. If you want the page to hold together without repeating one colour everywhere, pick two colours for the whole sheet and let the third be bare paper, so the stripes of the cane, the highlights on the bells and the gaps between berries all carry the white.

The candy cane is the one shape whose outline already tells you what to do, since the stripes are drawn in and only need alternate filling. Colour every other band, leave the ones between them bare, and the cane is finished. If you would rather it not be red, the same alternation works in any two colours, and a cane in blue and white or green and white still reads as a cane. Mark the bands you intend to fill with a light dot first, because losing count halfway along the curve is easy and there is no way back.

Both bells are closed rounded shapes with a slot near the bottom and a loop at the top, and they are the natural place to try making flat paper look like metal. Leave a narrow strip of white down one side of each bell, colour the rest, then press a little harder along the opposite edge. The small jingle bell repeats the trick at a size where most marker tips will be too broad, so keep a sharpened pencil for it. Doing both bells the same way, with the white strip on the same side, makes the page look deliberate rather than assembled.

Holly leaves have spined edges and a glossy dark green surface, and the berries sit in small clusters rather than one by one, which is how they are drawn around this wreath. Colour the berries first, while the leaves around them are still white, and the red stays where it belongs; done the other way around, a pencil looking for a berry tends to stray onto green. The bow at the base is the one place on the wreath with long smooth curves, so it is a relief after the leaves and worth leaving as a reward.

Markers are one option on this sheet, since the shapes are closed and well separated and no long shared edge runs where two colours would meet. Even so, put a spare sheet underneath, since six solid objects add up to a lot of ink on thin paper. Print at actual size on plain A4 paper so the small bell keeps its detail, because fit-to-page shrinks that shape first. Card is worth using if the sheet is going to be cut up, and printing two copies lets one be coloured whole and one be cut apart.

Cut apart, the six objects become tags and decorations: the star and both bells have obvious places for a hole and a loop of thread, and the wreath frames anything you slip behind it. Left whole, the sheet works as a folder cover or the front of a card, and the empty white between the objects is room for a name. Being a set of separate objects rather than a single picture, the sheet can also be shared, since two people can work on it at once without reaching across each other.

Published 28 August 2026Updated 28 August 2026789 words