The neck needs to be attached soon, so finishing it is the current priority.
I traced the head of my flat top mandolin onto a sheet of paper and copied it a bunch of times, and then went to town trying to come up with a suitable design. I have some Ablam (sometimes Abalam) scraps that have a lot of blue in them, so my mind immediately went to waves, in keeping with the flood theme. The famous Japanese
“Great Wave of Kanagawa” sprung to mind, and I have seen it executed fantastically in inlay, but it is complicated and tedious, and big as it was, it was only one wave.
So I settled on a triple, somewhat simplified wave. Not only does it imply a lot of water, but it can also be seen as the stylized letters M (for my last name), N (for my wife), and S for the Searcys.
Now for the headstock shape. I really liked the bottom middle design with multi-color clouds and lightning, which I had intended to do intarsia-style using woods including my previous water-damaged shop floor. So I mocked up the design with photocopies of the woods I had planned to use laid on the actual head, but unfortunately the design didn’t work in practice because the light clouds were just too much contrast from the dark headstock. There was also the practical consideration of wanting to keep a thin border of dark at the top around the light clouds, which would have been nearly impossible to keep intact during routing.
So I settled on a design more like the bottom right left, with a cloud-implying shape, a lightning bolt, and the triple wave beneath.