The colorful designs / presets can be added to vectors. They can be distorted using a large number of filters such as the deform but equally you could use the affine, ripple, mirror and many others.
As soon as you go to the filter menu and use one of them, the layer will automatically be converted from a vector shape to a raster layer and can then be warped in all kinds of way, the conversion is done via the assistants and the assistant manager if you wish to change that behavior.
Use deform filter found in the filter menu under distort. You can set up a number of handles around the artwork and drag those handles to warp the design in all kinds of ways.
You can also use the repeat command found in the filter menu and apply the effect multiple times to any shape and as you distort it, it can potentially go anyway and you decide you don't like it, just undo.
You can fill a circle / ellipse shape with a preset such as a rainbow preset (please check out our tutorial on how to quickly create that). The artwork can then be applied as linear or radial etc inside the circle container but adding pins all the way around the edge of your circle you can drag from the center to create large globules of yellows and greens around the edge without destroying the form of the circle.
You can also use the twirl effect to distort the design only in the center. As soon as you move the origin point then the shape itself will distort and stretch. Set the angle and radius to the max for the design, you can set it to 720. Apply it multiple times and you will end up with a spiral preset design.