Another failure

My goal is to create a snowflake that's roughly 3 inches across that looks pretty, works up fairly quickly to insert in the Christmas cards for my family and a few other select individuals. The one I showed yesterday is pretty, but not really quick to tat.

On the next one I started with a 3 round centre to save some tatting time and used the same kind of idea and the previous snowflake for the next row, but I wanted the arms to be more pronounced, which they are. However, there are too many stitches too close together so the whole thing ruffles. The ruffling wasn't too pronounced until the last row. While the design worked up more quickly and had some redeeming features it's not going to lay flat without some aggressive blocking. I might fight with one snowflake, but if I'm going to do a bunch of them I want them to cooperate and lay flat right off the shuttles so I'm calling this one a fail. I'm not going to tweak it to make it work and I'm certainly not doing a drawing for it.

So I'm on to the third design which so far I kind of like, but I'm thinking I might want to do it again as an eight sided design instead of a 6 point snowflake. It isn't snowflake-y enough for my taste so this next one probably won't make it as my Christmas design either, but it probably will get drawn out.