This link may be able to help you...

Here is a link that might be useful: Drying hydrangeas

Drying the flower heads in silica gel is really the only way to hold flower color for very long. Typically, naturally dried hydrangeas - like in the above link - do go through a pretty significant color change. Eventually they do turn a uniform dusty beige/brown but over an extended period of time. Even the silica dried flowers will lose color eventually after a year or two.

I agree with gardengal48. You can see silica information in the previous link or go directly to the webpage by clicking on the link below. There is a link in there to step by step directions in here:

http://www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com/dry_silica_steps.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Silica information

Thank you both very much! I only have a blue shrub at the moment but the blue is so intense, im going to try and dry some later in the summer/fall when they are ready. ;)

After reading the links that the both of you sent me, i had a thought. what about a food de-hydrator? well, i read online that you can use a dehydrator! It says to set the temp for 100ðF and "cook" for 4 to 5 hours in a single layer, not touching. hmmm! Cool!

Some people use it for drying out parsley leaves so they look like the parsley leaves you buy in jars in the grocery store's spice section. And of course you can use them to dry out flower blooms. For home made ones, people put several trays so you can do either different plant materials or a lot of the same materials at the same time. You put some sort of heat lamp at the bottom and perhaps a fan to extract hot air from the top.

One commercial model can be seen here:
http://www.harvestessentials.com/excalibur.html

Here is a link that might be useful: You can make them yourself too...