Design terrors

I am kind of stressing about the design. I still have a bunch of hours of work to go on the neck, but once that is done the next steps will have impact to the design. The first of which is the headstock.

I am really trying to find a theme of some sort to tie the whole thing together (cue the Big Lebowski reference). I have two possibilities for inlays - I have a nice piece of flamed maple and that piece of spalted maple I found in the woods. I would REALLY like to use the spalted maple. I think having something from the woods where I spend so much time would make this bass really special.

My original plan was to do something like this:

This is one of Les Claypool's basses (well its actually not his anymore because he auctioned it off for charity). My original thought was to make a pickguard like the one shown in the picture. After messing around with that idea for a while I decided I didn't like it. I also think there is a strong possibility that the wood on the pickguard would warp over time and that would just look bad.

Next idea was "circles". Instead of making a pickguard thing like in the above bass I was going to do a circle inlay, so it would look somewhat like a Musicman bass (ok, not really, but you get the idea):

I would also have a circle inlay on the top horn and the top of the headstock would have some kind of circular element. I think the circle thing is cool, but it does create some weirdness when you look at the edge of the bass compared to the edge of the circle, its a symmetrical element against a freeform one. I am concerned I would focus on that every time I looked at the bass. I know myself well enough to realize that's a distinct possibility - there's a contour on my first bass that bugs me every time I see it. 

Now I'm thinking about doing an inlay, but having it be two pieces, one on the upper side and one on the lower side. Dawn had a good idea of making the inlay follow the contour of the wing, then have a sort of free form element on the inside, closest to the pickups. To carry this idea along, there would be a teardrop shaped inlay on the upper horn and some kind of similar thing on the headstock. 

So I guess that's the idea right now. I have some time to play around with it, the key is playing around and not stressing out. Its supposed to be fun! I have to remind myself of that.