I hope you do not mind; I played with the dandylion seed head picture. I call it "dandylion molecular explosion" when I was done messing with it. Probably 20 minutes "work," mostly a lot of effects applied.
In fact, the effects, since I still have the base image still open, I can list what I did in Paint.Net:
<New Image, created from copying the image from your post>, Pencil Sketch, Color Filter (dark blue, iirc), Oil Painting, Curve Adjustment: Luminosity, Fragment Blur, Glow, Luminosity Curve Adjustment: Luminosity (#2)
That is all, and this is the result:
