Sometimes when I'm in this situation I try sticking an image of the item in it's current state in photoshop and trying different overlays to see how a final product would look. Bit of a pain in the ass, but it's broken the old 'choice-paralysis' more than a few times!
Choice-paralysis - I like that term!
I might do that. Have not tried GIMP or Inkscape for modelling yet, anyway.