The art of creating dreamy flowers

I've been doing a lot of reading to educate myself on how to create a dreamy looking flower portrait.  Surprisingly there are only a few photographers who have posted the technique to follow so I am learning by trial and error.  I have watched a few youtube videos as well and am contemplating signing up for a Photography course to learn more.  For now, I'm experimenting with what I have read and anxiously waiting for the fields of flowers to be in bloom.

I have some tulips in a vase and a group of flowers blooming in my garden. I started with the vase as the weather wasn't the greatest outside.  I used a black poster board as a prop.  These pictures are a series of the same photo that have been blended together to create a full shot that is all in focus regardless of where you look.  It can large number of photos and in these cases there are as many as 15 - 50 photographs which are then imported into Photoshop and "aligned" and then "stacked".  I enjoy doing this and it's good practice but it didn't give me what I was looking for. When doing this it also creates "huge" files and often my computer is unable to handle them.  I have to get creative to find ways to transfer them and use a separate hard drive for this purpose.  While I liked these,  I wanted something that was more "dreamy".  So it's back to the drawing board.  

The flowers in the garden are really pretty but they are very low growing to the ground forcing me to lay on my stomach to photograph them.  I tried using a tripod and it doesn't work as it's really important to position the focal point directly on the desired area in the photo.  I pulled out my yoga mat and a pillow to help me lay on the ground without agitating my shoulder too much.  I was pretty sore by the time I finished but it's good practice and right now gives me something to do to amuse myself.

The following photos are getting closer, but they're not quite there yet.  I need to better understand how to get that "blurred" look in the foreground and have some beautiful bokeh in the background.  I'll keep trying.

I practiced a bit today again in  between services.  I still have some more learning to do but I'm slowly seeing effect that I am hoping to achieve.  I want to go to the Arboretum this week to try my luck with the daffodils.  

While I was laying on my stomach "manually" focusing on the flowers, I got photo bombed by and ant and a bee.  Hah hah, it added a bit of excitement for me to see them.  I didn't quite have the right shutter speed for the ant but I still thought it was pretty fun to see.  The bee stuck around for quite some time gathering up the pollen.  I'm always happy to have them in the garden.