The Eat Cake Be Merry Guide to Colour Mixing

Mixing your own colours saves space, time and allows you to decorate with unique colours that don't come in a bottle (hello bespoke bakes!). But if you don't know where to start the mix-timidation can be real.

Thankfully, the amazing Eat Cake Be Merry shares her tried and tested colours and techniques so you can mix it up like the pros. (Hint: you only need 12 colours!).

"Colour mixing is like baking. With a basic pantry of colours you can combine them in different ways to find balance and create something new and amazing!" - Eat Cake Be Merry.

While colour mixing can seem complicated, the full colour spectrum boils down to a few core colours: Primaries, Secondaries, Tints, Tones and Shades.

Primary colours are base hues that cannot be created by mixing colours. As the base of all hues they're an essential for colour mixing. For efficiency, Liz suggests having bright and deep primaries on hand.

For clear and vibrant colours start with the bright primaries (Sky Blue, Hot Pink and Yellow). For bolder and richer colours start with the deep primaries (Yellow, Cobalt and Red).

While you can use the primaries alone to mix up a wide variety of shades, having the secondary colours (Purple, Green and Orange) on hand will really speed things up. "Though you can mix these from scratch with the primaries they are frequently used colours so having them on hand will act as a shortcut to making tertiary colours and beyond" Liz explains.

Chocolate is an essential as a shortcut to mixing beautifully warm and muted colours.

Finally, White, Concrete and Black (known as the mood makers) are the key to expanding the range of any hue. "Increasing the lightness or darkness of any colour really helps give it mood and character" Liz says.

Start with primary colours — Experiment with mixing just the primary colours, playing around with the quantities, to better understand how they interact and what happens when you mix different colours and amounts.

Start light, go dark — When mixing colours start with the lighter shades first, gradually adding your darker colours until you achieve your desired hue.

Play with substitutions — Try mixing Hot Pink instead of Red, or Sky Blue instead of Cobalt to mix more vibrant variations of colours. By switching to a different tone of a similar hue you can unlock all new shades and learn more about how colours interact with each other.

Get started on your colour mixing journey with all the colours and all the theory together in the Eat Cake Be Merry x Colour Mill Pack.