Casting Flower Pedals

[dgelnett]

What is the best method for casting flower pedals? A few months back I took some of my wife's rose pedals and dried them with an iron which seem to keep the color. When I put them in some PR they bleached out the color.
So next tried spraying the pedals with shellac after drying them. That worked pretty good not great.
This week tried the same process with pansy. I found when I dried the pansy they lost their color so when I put them in a cast and turned looked a lot like brown sea weed.

Is there a better method? My wife loves her flowers.

Now turning these blanks is a whole other matter. each pedal is a soft spot just waiting for my tool to hit and break off some of the blank. Took lots of CA glue.

Here is a picture of the "sea weed" pen and a mesquite pen. I put them in a bowl I did awhile back to hold them up for the picture.

Thanks

 

[ctubbs]

A couple of nice pens and a fine looking bowl. Drying flowers is an art all unto itself, but when the surface gets wetted, the fine cells on the surface may, and probably will, lay down and give a color change. Take a fresh rose petal and gently rub it one way with your finger, then the other way and watch the color, you will have at least two and most likely three different colors. The flowers do not have smooth surfaces and when the roughness is blended the color changes. Of course YMMV.
Charles