Ok, I'm doing a trial run of icing coloring before I get my cake baked. I'm trying to make navy blue icing. In using the Wilton color chart, it says to get navy blue you mix royal blue and black. My color is coming out more like a violet purple. I keep adding more black to darken it but it's just making a deeper purple color. Can anyone please help me with this?

Colors can take up to 2 hours to develop. The best advice is - wait.

Hmm! That's interesting!

Well it could be because there is purple in the black colouring, try testing the colouring, get a jug of water and put one drop of the colouring into the water, see if it goes purple!

Why don't you try a different brand of black food colouring and see if the same thing happens?

HTH

A better way to analyze your black would be by to use paper chromatography:

Take a strip of white paper toweling, or of a white paper coffee filter. About an inch from one end, place a single dot, or a crosswise line, of your food coloring on the paper. Put a small amount of water in the bottom of a glass, so that if you hang your strip in the glass, about 1/4" to 1/2" of the paper is immersed in the water.

Hang the strip in the glass, so that it isn't touching the sides, and the end nearest your sample (but NOT the sample itself) is in the water. Watch the dyes separate, as the water carries them up the strip.

It sounds like all you have to work with is Wilton colors. Forget the black Just use more blue gel. It's the makeup of the black color that is giving you the purple shade. After you have made the blue a very intense, deep shade and it has set for at least an hour or two, then you can maybe add just a touch of blue if necessary. Just take it *very* easy w/that black - a very little goes a l oooo o n g way

Thank you everyone. This is my first time dying icing. Thank goodness I have a week before baking the cake. I made another batch of icing and added it to the purple batch to lighten up the color. Then I added more roal blue. I'll give it some time to settle to see if that deepens the blue. Yes, the Wilton colors are the ones I am working with.

Are there any other brands of coloring that are better?

Trash the Wilton black and go buy Americcolor - they sell it at my local Hobby Lobby now!!
Duff has a line of colors that I have never used at Micheals.

I found the Americolor navy blue at my local cake supply store! Going to make some icing to color this afternoon!