Hi,
I just want to emphasise what Ulco mentioned. I was a bit surprised that getting this effect using a fractal wasn't the first thought :-). TG is like a big open toolkit. We provide the building blocks to allow a tremendous variety of effects. The fractal nodes are one of the fundamental building blocks. If you are familiar with the sorts of patterns the different fractals can generate then you can think of those as the basis for more complex effects built up with different combinations of nodes.
I've attached the project I used to render the above image to show how easy this was. It doesn't include the object though, it was an Xfrog flower model. You can check out the node settings anyway.
I will admit that this would be easier if the fractal previews were more responsive to work with, but this is an area we plan to improve.
Regards,
Jo