Illustrator is a very powerful tool - the things that can be accomplished with such simple starting shapes is unbelievable.  This little demonstration makes perfect use of some of the advanced tools available in Photoshop in order to create an extraordinary shape - our simple starting point - a 26 point star

Add an additional duplicate star in the middle and round off edges 

Time for some gradients

Blending Effect in Illustrator 

Pucker & Bloat/Roughen Effects in Illustrator

Beautiful colors...Now time for photoshop

Decided to change the overall hue after all effects were applied.  Here is the result

Our final result!