Obsessing over Color and Shingles

Besides the bay window, I've been thinking a LOT about what to do under the peaks. A couple summers ago I played around with shaped shingles on the garage face:


I made these shingles out of plain cedar random shingles from Homer using the tablesaw to standardize the width, and the mitersaw to chop the corners. It was a relatively inexpensive solution, compared with what I've found on-line, and it produced the effect I wanted.

I'd like to do something similar under the front and side peaks:



And here is another picture from a "Painted Ladies" book (Pomona & Larson) that shows some ideas for designs to put into the shingles with color:



Of course, that is far too busy for my taste, but if you look closely at it, there are several different simpler individual patterns that could be used:



I kind of like these:



But I also like the diamond pattern in between these two - I used something like that on the garage. Jim thinks they look like cherries, so maybe that's why I like it...

One of the things I've been wondering with this shingle idea is if the scale would be right on the front of the house. The peak is broken up with the top of the bay window and also with the arched window.



Just looking at the house makes it really hard to tell. Maybe because of the crappy condition of the old siding. So tonight I amused myself by working in a photo editor. I copied the garage roof shingles onto the above picture. Let me preface this by saying that I am NOT an expert at photo editing, so don't look at the details, just look at it for an overall perspective. This is what I came up with:



What do you think-
-will it work to do the entire peak in the shingles?

How about this one:



I kind of like that a little better. I think it matches the garage better this way, and it just looks better - maybe because it helps define the peak shape even though it's broken up by the bay window.

What do you think????