MAKING A FLOWER
Here's a technique for making a flower. It uses the rotate/duplicate technique from my tutorial Tickmarks For Guages, Dials and Clocks (http://www.lyzrdstomp.com/tutorial_tickmarks), but I'll try to explain the technique in brief here as well.

Start with a blank canvas.

If Rulers aren't showing already, go to the View Menu and turn on the Rulers.

From the top Ruler, drag down a horizontal guideline and from the left Ruler, a vertical guideline so they form a nice crosshair in the middle of the canvas.

Next, create a new layer, call it PETAL, and select it.

 

Choose the Pen Tool from the tool palette, and make sure your Options (at the top of the screen after you choose the Pen Tool) look like the image at left.

Draw the shape of one petal however you'd like. It doesn't have to represent a real-world flower petal, it could be weird, fantasy, alien, whatever.

Now, we're going to convert the path to a selection. We could have drawn a shape instead of a path that then had to be converted to a selection, but what's the harm in learning another tool, eh?

Go to the Paths palette, choose your Work Path (name it if you'd like), then at the bottom of the palette, choose Load Path as a Selection...

So we end up with this.

 

Now, pick 2 colors that we'll make a gradient out of. I'll use standard whitish flower colors as shown at left...
Then choose the Foreground to Background gradient in the Options bar. Choose Linear as the style, and make sure Transparency is OFF.

Now fill the selection with the gradient so that the darker part of the flower is at the bottom, like so.

Now we'll add a subtle edge to the petal using Inner Glow. Choose it from Layer Style under the Layer Menu (or from the Layers Style icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette).

 

Here's my settings from the Inner Glow options. Note I changed the yellow color to a brownish color and changed Blend Mode to Normal. Play with Size and Opacity until you get something like...

 

This.

One technique I like to do is using half a selection at a time, make a very subtle streak up the middle to give the flower a crease.

Like this.

What you want to avoid is giving the petal a definite light/shadow direction at this time, because when we rotate it, it'll look wrong if you have locked in a light and shadow source-those won't rotate with the petal.

Notice my petal is lit right down the middle for the most part.

At this point, use the Brush tool to add streaks, spots, or whatever you want to make it look more like a flower.

Here's my finished petal. Yeah, it's not too fancy.
Now, duplicate the layer that the petal is on so you end up with 2 copies of the petal.

For this next part, we're going to rotate the duplicate flower petal.

This is based on the technique in my other tutorial, Tickmarks For Guages, Dials and Clocks.

Basically, the idea is to choose Transform/Rotate, move the objects center to the bottom, then OPTION-SHIFT ROTATE (PC: ALT-SHIFT ROTATE) the duplicate.

Here's the petal after choosing Transform/Rotate.

We have to move it's center point to the bottom of the flower...
Like this. Now when we rotate the object, it'll pivot around the bottom of the petal.

OPTION-SHIFT ROTATE (PC: ALT-SHIFT ROTATE) the duplicate.

Here's our original petal and the rotated one. Now for the rest of the petals.

To rotate and duplicate a layer at the same time, do a COMMAND-OPTION-SHIFT-T (PC: CONTROL-ALT-SHIFT-T) over and over until you get...

This.

You'll have a lot of petal layers at this point, so link and merge them all to 1 layer.

Now, duplicate this merged single layer to get a 2nd layer of petals.

Scale and rotate slightly this 2nd layer so it looks like...
This. Not much contrast, so feel free to use Curves or some other technique to boost contrast if you wish. You'll definitely want to apply an Outer Glow to the top layer so it stands out from the bottom layer a bit.
Here's the top layer with Outer Glow applied. Stands out a lot better now.
Now create a circle selection in the middle of the flower and fill it with a gradient that fits with your flower color and design.

Fill the circle with some noise, maybe a few beveled tiny dots, maybe even diffuse the circle to give it that rough "flowery-center" look.

 
This is what you get when you layer LOTS of petals.

That's it. You're done! Hopefully you'll use this with other elements to make something interesting.

Have fun!
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