Yuan Chuan 
Creating is the most intense excitement one can come to know.
—Anni Albers, On Designing
I recently wrote a post — that was shared here on CSS-Tricks — where I looked at ways to use Unicode characters to create interesting (and random) patterns. Since then, I’ve continued to seek new characters to build new patterns. I even borrowed a book about Unicode from a local library.
(That's a really thick book, by the way.)
It's all up to your imagination to see the possible patterns a Unicode character can make. Although not all characters are good as patterns, the process is a good exercise for me.
And, aside from Unicode itself, the methods to build the patterns may not be so obvious. It usually takes a lot of inspiration and trial and error to come up with new ones.