When in Doubt Add an Arty Texture

The problem with photo manipulation is that there is no set recipe.

I have been trying out some techniques from a Photoshop magazine and although they work well with the magazine's picture of a flower, they just don't suit the flower photograph I'm trying to use.

So here is my original flower photograph:

Here is the flower picture after following steps in the magazine:

It doesn't feel like anything special to me.  Now what?

Often, when I get to this point in a manipulation, I start looking at my texture backgrounds.  These art textures might be created in Photoshop Elements or in this case, it was a gelli print I did which I enhanced in Photoshop:

So I added this layer on top of my flowers and changed the blend mode to difference.  I reduced the opacity to about 50% so that the flowers weren't overwhelmed.  It was a little dark so finally I added a levels adjustment layer to lightened it and also changed the hue and saturation with a further adjustment layer. This was my final result - somehow a little more arty and not quite so ordinary.