there not "chips" They are flakes ....candy system is a 3 or more overlay coats....Meaning a groundcoat is put down first followed by a transparent overcoat,followed by clear....the best way to describe it is a layer of cellophane(spelling???)The ground coat is very important to the result of the effect you are trying to acheive...for instance a fine mettalic pink ground coat under a candy red will show up less orange than a coarse mettalic pink...this is due to the flake size having less "candy area"...With our oem bike colours even the solids use candy system....so its not limited to mettalic colours.....people say candy colours cant be blended but we do it all the time...its due to experience and trial and error...So the problem is not only the ground coat its also the application of the candy dye itself....One drop of shit in the dye leads to disaster,the drop of shit breaks the surface tension and the dye pools around the shit leading to a splotch thats much darker than the job,i try to keep candy dye to a two coat limit on edge to egde repairs(where our painted panel meets directly with an original one)If you lean on the dye to much you can find yourself in a world of shit...Example if i want a dark candy blue i use a groundcoat thats dark enough to only require 2 coats of the dye broken down in clear to give the candy depth/flip effect because if you use a silver and push the dyes limit by trying to darken the colour with candy your going to get "train tracks" or "patchyness"on the job...lighter dyes is not much of a problem because to change a silver to orange is not such a big swing....but to change a silver to a dark blue youve got no chance....sometime we have triple candy jobs with a pearl thrown in between one of the dye's.....candy system's really sort out the tradesmen from the monkeys....but they are the invention of the devil for spray painters