I tried all sorts of things — mixing yellow powder with white to make brown, mixing crystals with powder to make dust, combining liquids with solids to make mud, and so on.
Literal
I [topic-は], yellow powder [object-を] white powder [with-と] mix-and brown powder [into-に] doing, crystal [object-を] powder [with-と] mix-and dust [into-に] doing, liquid [object-を] solid [with-と] combine-and, mud [object-を] make-doing etc. this-and-that did-try [explanatory-のだ].
A long parallel structure using the ~たり~たりする pattern, which lists representative actions ('do things like X, Y, Z'). Each clause chains with て-form verbs, ends in ~たり, and the whole structure closes with an inflected する at the very end. The ~にする parts mean 'turn [X] into [Y],' using に for the resulting state. 結合させる is causative of 結合する ('to combine'). A richly textured sentence showing how Japanese strings actions into a narrative list.