Hi Samantha,
There is a big difference between transparent and translucent.
"I assume that I can choose any four colors from the spectrum to use as my primaries as long as they are translucent?"
Three transparent colors are primaries. Magenta PR122, Cyan PB15 and Yellow PY150 or PY153 in oils or PY100 in watercolors. 

Laurie's palette is: opaque Yellow, transparent Magenta, transparent Purple, transparent Turquoise and opaque white, it's 95% complete. 
There is no pure bright tint of cyan.
There no pure bright blue.
Cyan transparent darkens to blue, in the Iceland Spar, Beryl, Labracorite and Aquamarine crystals.
Only Cyan tints to a bright cyan.
Cobalt Blue darkens to blue and dark blue in the copper element Azurite mineral.
Ultramarine Blue darkens to dark blue.
Turquoise and Purple mix to a Cobalt Blue hue which darkens to blue and dark blue in crystals.

Yellow is transparent, translucent or opaque.
Yellow and Magenta PR122 or Opera PR122+Q10 make Orange, Red, Scarlet.
Magenta transparent is dark magenta, it will tint to a pure bright magenta.

Blue is opposite Yellow. 
Yellow, Magenta and Turquoise will mix a brown. Brown and blue mix neutral dark.
Laurie can make a magenta/green opposition, a turquoise/scarlet opposition and a yellow-brown/blue opposition. She put a lot a thought into this palette.

I thought their might have been a problem when Samantha didn't answer my post, so I went into her account and sure enough, she hadn't clicked "Notify of Replies" so I did it for her. 

Hi Laurie, it's good to see you posting. I'm glad to see you helping Samantha out, she is very new to painting and it's good for you to show her how a few transparent colors will mix any color.

Samantha, you should get a post in your mailbox that this message was posted.

I use lemon yellow, primary magenta, pthalo turquoise, dioxyzine purple and titanium white.  Period.  no other colors

Thank you Don.  I really appreciate your advice.  I'm not ready to get into oil painting just quite yet and will see what I can produce using acrylics.  I've been using a heavy gel medium to make the stems thick just as you said because yes, the acrylics dry too fast to make the stems with a canvas scraper.   

I do have an ignorant question for you.  I'm unsure what you mean by painting with transparent primaries.  I have a lot of acrylic paint but only one tube of a primary color and it's NOT labeled "transparent".  I haven't seen transparent colors in the store to be honest but maybe I've always overlooked them.  When you say this, do you mean to buy the three primary colors in tubes labeled transparent and then make all of the other colors I use in the painting from only these colors?   

Thanks,
Samantha

I love her colors and the texture but am thinking it's oil paint instead of acrylics but I’m unsure. (I’m truly a novice.) She says on her site it’s mixed media of both oil and acrylic but I have no idea how to work with both at the same time. Nonetheless, I'm only using acrylics myself and simply focusing on achieving color harmony right now.  If I can wrap my head around how to choose and mix harmonious colors I'll feel a lot better but I’m getting tired of failing and have no one to turn to but the net for help so...
So, I've tried multiple times at this but my results are pretty horrific.  In my first attempt the blue and brown I used just wasn’t pleasing to the eye and over all looks... nasty.  

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here. It’s too busy somehow unlike the example of what I want it to look like.  In my second attempt I read up on color and consulted the color wheel (first time to use it) and mixed my colors accordingly, got about a fourth done with the background and decided it needed to be warmed up a bit (looked too neutral) so I added a little burnt sienna to the lighter color to warm it up some. (In second painting I used ultramarine blue, burnt umber, white, and gold).  The results are not to my liking to say the least.  I will embarrassingly attach photos of each attempt for you to cringe over but maybe seeing my results will help you see what I’m doing wrong. I’ve ripped the canvas off of the first attempt already and will be doing the same to the second soon.

I would really appreciate any advice over how to get results more like what I'm aiming for. I've read online about color theory and learned some but still as soon as I sit down to try again I wonder if I’m going about it the right way at all and expect my results to be either clash or be to boring. Just wondering if I’m missing some pertinent information that would make this easier to understand.
Thanks again.

Samantha