Dear Taffy,
Have you tried doing Verhoff Van Geison stain on these tissues.  This is
the stain that I do on arteries, but my tissues are in paraffin.  When I
have to do image analysis I just leave out the Van Geison part of the
stain.  With just the Verhoff the elastin only is stained and gives a nice
almost black and white stain.  I use the Elastin Stain kits from Sigma (cat
# HT 25-A).

Hope this helps,

Jean Reed
MCD Pharmacology
Novartis Pharmacology Corp.
Summit, NJ