Hi.
What is the best way to color candy melts? I'd rather not buy a whole bag of different colors because I won't need it all. I know liquid food colors are out. I have gel pastes (I think that's what they are, the colors used for coloring icing). Will that work? I also have a powdered food color. Could that be used? And do I just add drops of gel paste or sprinkles of powder and stir until I get the shade I want?

I don't know about the powdered, I think you can use it but I'm not sure.
The gels have water in them and that siezes chocolate, if you add shortening it should work. I just made black that way.
They sell food coloring just for candy.

Powdered food colors are perfectly ok. If you use gel, you can add a bit of vegetable oil or crisco type shortening to make it thinner.

Did some last week; I thoght that I had candy colors @ home, turned out, I only had the regular paste. Used it in very small portions at a time until I acheived the color I wanted and didn't have any problems with seizing.

Yesterday I colored candy melts with regular coor paste and had absolutey no problems..HTH

I tried gel paste yesterday. The candy melts got thicker, but it wasn't that much of a problem. Black was a nitemare. I had to use a lot and then I had to add oil because it began to seize. Next time I might consider the powdered colors because buying the colored melts is easier, but I don't need all of them and then what do I do with them afterwards?

I use so much colored chocolate, that I did switch to buying the colored chocolate pieces. Much easier for me.