Rose,
My favorite photoshop tool is the photomerge option where you can merge and blend 2 or more photos together. That's how I did both mine! I took the clown photograph at an antique mall and then merged it with the dandelion. Playing around with the saturation levels and stuff.
With "Noir Wishes" I took the dandelion image and removed the color and then airbrushed the background to make it even toned. I then made the image smaller. I merged it with the self-portrait...the "square around the first dandelion" was the merged image. I airbrushed around it to try and blend it with the background so the square wouldn't show. Then I just used the cloning tool to repeat the dandelion image and I adjusted the lighting effects and contrast a bit.
I have learned all this just by playing around with photoshop. It's still just the very basics, I have a lot more to learn and in fact, have added a photoshop class to my fall schedule of classes!
So, you experts better watch out!
Rose...how did you do the skull one? Is that a scanned drawing? I like it a lot!
Best,
Inky