Gothic Trim Sketches

There are literally thousands and thousands of variations.  Find examples by walking around your town or looking on line.  They encrusted houses, churches and even river boats for several decades or more.  They became fashionable prior to the Civil War and were part of a whole design movement called Gothic Revival. 
At the time people were into all kinds of REVIVAL styles, like they did not trust themselves to come up with something new.  There was Italianate, which also had heavy brackets on many buildings, Greek Revival, Egyptian Revival, Renaissance Revival... later came Georgian and Classical Revival into the Twentieth Century.

These were not always just cut out of a board, they were often layered up with several differently pierced boards sandwiched together, with moulded edges, pinnacles rising from the peak, rosettes and piercings through some but not all layers, and often painted in wild or elegant color schemes.. Three four or five colors, mostly "Stone" colors were popular with white trim.  Yellow, rusty and sandstone red....
Gothic style windows often had leaded glass.   Board and Batten siding emphasized height and verticality, though occasionally houses could be decorated in this way and be very squat with very low angle roofs.
If the neighbor had done this Fashion Forward style, you might take your family's severe, hundred year old Georgian or Federal house and Tart it Up with Gothic trim.  Search for pictures of the Wedding Cake house in Kennebunkport(I think), Maine for an example.  My favorite Gothic house is a little red one on a side street in Wiscasset, Maine, It has Oriole and bay windows and red siding with white trim.

These pictures are called Barge Boards by some, but I assume they were VERGE boards in the day.
Three of these have different designs on each half to save room on the drawing space.  (Truly some people would not notice!)

People would even execute these designs in canvas, and hang them on fancy tents for summer homes, and gazebos, sort of like the tents used by knights in the middle ages, with stencilled walls, tassels, etc..  You could even carve wooden tassels, acorns or pendants etc. and hang them on the Verge boards of your house with interlocking metal screw eyes screwed into them for hanging.

These are not too hard to make with modern tools, but upkeep is important, with regular painting, and pre-treating the wood before beginning work on them.
The biggest obstacle is getting a good design.  Look at lots before doing the work, and do not get too ambitious unless you love woodworking.  Refine your design in full scale on paper to make sure it looks right.  There are a lot of these that are not quite as good as they could be, even on old houses.
Imagine a tiny yellow and white cottage like this deep in the woods.

These motifs are applied to the roof verge before the roof sheathing is applied.  The roof extends out over this, and over any mouldings you want to apply, then shingles, drip edges. etc., are applied to shelter them from the weather.  See the illustration.

Not to scale