How I dry cornflower petals

Cornflower petals are a nice addition to dried flower petal confetti, so I’m saving and drying the petals from flowers that don’t go to cut flower sales. I’ve been collecting fully-open flowers about every other day, giving insects a chance to take some of the pollen first. The petals are removed easily by simply pulling them away from the flower head. For me, I’ve found that the best air-drying method for preserving as much colour as possible is to dry them in our conservatory which gets quite hot on sunny days and is at least warm on partly cloudy days. I’ve tried drying them in my upstairs workroom, which is nowhere near as warm as the conservatory, and found that the pale colours faded far too much and dark purples and reds dried to near-black. I place the petals on paper either on some spare baking sheets, or on a shelf in my air-dehydrator, and they’re usually dry within a few days, depending on the weather. Once dry, they go into a sealed container for storage until being mixed with my other dried petals.