Alexis,
Okay, so I have a couple of ideas.
First, before trying the petals, you should probably be really familiar with making a basic striped bead (like the ones I've posted below).
Looking at your pictures, it looks like there's no clear on the outside, which is
crucial to making the petals look right. The clear is what pushes the petals out - there's no unusual technique. It's just placing opaque dots, melting them in, putting a layer of clear or transparent over them, moving on to the next petal. Also, try five dots around rather than four.
But to try to make things as easy as possible, I'll try to do another tutorial - let's say making a purple petal bead with each petal being darker (I'm a way more visual person, so I hope this makes sense)...
1. Make a disk bead (black is a good base color) and place five periwinkle dots around the disk.
2. Slowly completely melt in the dots so that they're evenly spaced around the disk.
3. Place a blob of dark transparent purple right on top of each of the periwinkle dots, and melt completely so that you now have purple "spots" all around the disk.
4. Using the periwinkle, place dots (a touch smaller then the last dots) just to the right of center on top of all of the purple spots, and melt in completely.
5. Repeat step #3 with medium transparent purple.
6. Repeat step #4.
7. Repeat step #3 with light transparent purple.
8. Now, heat up a big blob of clear. Make sure the bead is cool enough so that the petals won't smear, and wrap around the bead in clear.
9. Melt it in, alternating heating on the right of the bead (to pull the glass to the right), and heating to the left of the bead (to pull the glass that way).
10. You might need to add some more clear on the ends. Just add a little bit at a time, and only place the additional clear on the clear that's already on the bead. Then use gravity and heat to push the petals out further. If you add more clear to the edges of the base, it'll look funky.
11. That's it!
Good luck - hope this helps.
Amy