I am trying to emulate this pattern. Seems easy to do if I just create one "shell" and keep repeating it. But that will bring too many objects into the mix. I tried pattern but I can't find a way to overlap the pattern so that the empty spaces are filled with a "shell". Can someone help. Basically this will be the background and will consist of hundreds of these little "shells"
based on your sample, it could be something like this:
Each tile is mirrored to the side and repeated to top or bottom. Of course, there's an almost infinite way to combine in order to create different patterns.