Never made roses, but have made a few flowers.
I spent ages faffing about needlessly, going 'pretty pretty pretty'.
Keep it as simple as you can, work out what you want to achieve then remove all the extras, if somebody looks at it and thinks 'Rose' job done, it is easy to add extras that nobody will see to this kind of thing.
Also keep the rubbish prototypes, hang them on the wall or something, they can often be seeds for future work.
...not roses but I was messing about with this this afternoon. It will be a water lily (the wild yellow type) when it is finished - I have leaves and stems to go with it.
The stamen are made from lost head nails and the petals are plasma cut from 0.9mm CR4. I made jigs to hold the stamen while I MIGed them to a washer. Further jigs to dish the petals and hold the petals in place while MIGing those to the stamen. Sorry about the focus - photography will probably go better in the daylight tomorrow. I think I might paint the leaves green and the flower yellow when it is done.
Graham.