Create an Animation

I am looking to 'grow' a series of flowers over 10 seconds. Initially, I would like to see a couple of different techniques of showing this flower growing. It needs to be done in After Effects, and please feel free to use plugins. A couple of suggested techniques are: Unfold the flower, oragami style; grow the flower from video mask or particles; use a watercolour technique where the flower is first 'drawn' on the slowly comes to life with colour. Once a technique has been approved, we can then apply this to the rest of the flowers. The overararcching idea is to bring the flower to life.