Not sure if you wanted the whole process, Simon, but something happened to your tulips when I went tiptoeing through them (and I've stayed up much too late...YAWN) It will be interesting to see because everyone has different programs and different ideas. I loved your story too. Very much. Looking back, I think I have always been fascinated by light and the patterns it makes. I vaguely remember writing a term paper on "Light" many years ago. Now,wish I could find it but think it was long ago pitched.

Simon, I was excited several weeks ago when your challenge
was first posted on the calendar.

So, over those last several weeks, I've been playing with some
of my own images to try to turn them into acceptable abstracts.

I hope you don't mind if I post them first...I will download your image
and see what I can come up with...sigh...if only my Nik plugin worked...

This challenge is hopefully going to help those that have seen my works over the years to create there own Abstracts along the lines of mine. But first let me give you some background into myself. My passion for Photography started on my 10th birthday when I was given my first camera a Brownie 127 which I loved back then and over the years things progressed through Zenit B which was a 35mm fully manual camera that i used for some 15 years and little did I know then how pleased I would be to not have a semi auto or full auto camera as it taught me all about aperture and lens speed, to this day my camera's are all used fully manual, even though I could let the electronics take over but that is no good for my sort of Photography. By the way my present cameras are Canon 1ds mark 3's that I cannot see me changing in the near future.
My love of Abstract's actually started before I had ever held a camera I can remember crossing my eyes or nearly closing my eyes, moving my head from side to side really fast and being amazed by the blurry patterns being created in my head, I loved it and everything evolved from there, I now have the ability to look at something and see the Abstract within, then the fun begins by taking the camera shot and downloading the image onto my laptop and making the software work for me to try and recreate the Abstract in my mind.Now I don't expect for one minute you to think like me but most of us like shapes and colors so you are already more than half way there, It's just that you didn't realise it haha.
I want you to have some fun with this challenge to create some Abstracts but for those that would like to take it a step further I will be here to answer any of your questions or give advice in any way I can and that applies to all of you, please bear in mind the time difference so if I take awhile to get back to you this will be the reason why.
Flowers seem to be a good base image for a lot of my Abstracts but unlike some I will only use my best shots to convert not the rubbish ones, my reasoning being rubbish shot rubbish Abstract, just my view. The first example I have posted here is a vase of Tulips and I have put all the stages here that I used in Photoshop but not my settings, as a challenge within a challenge how about some of you downloading my start image and working it through the same stages using your own settings and letting us see your final images, could be interesting, anyway have fun and lets get this underway.