I have a template of the animations and such, so I don't have to bother with that. Besides, the nonspells are just slightly modified versions of each other and most of the spells aren't really that complicated when you look at them, so. :V
I don't know how long I've been using it, for sure. I started somewhere around the Blinded by the Light contest, and then messed with it on and off. I did have programming experience beforehand, although that didn't really help until I figured out task-style programming.
The Meiling thing just started as the first nonspell and spell, with the nonspell starting out as something I wanted to try for a while. I don't know what caused me to link the angle change speed with the "mist" speed, but it made quite a beautiful pattern so I kept it. Meanwhile, the spell was supposed to just rain down instead of being a streaming card, but I found that it wasn't that fun so I, well, made it a streaming card.
Then I got the idea of a kicking card that exploded into butterflies, as a parody of the so-called "Fist of Kill Everything." I messed with it a fair bit, until I got to the vaguely flower-ish pattern it has now with the kick bullets.
Red Cannon came when I asked a friend of mine who plays Meiling on TouhouMUCK if he wanted to see any spells in particular, either official or custom. You can guess which he picked. Well, he actually just said any of the uppercut spells, and I picked Red Cannon since it actually has a projectile. It doesn't take much of an insane mind to associate melee=tackle and cannon=explosion for this kind of stuff, so.
Double Rainbow Wind Chime was actually going to be the nonspell before Red Cannon, as just a more powerful version of her first boss card from EoSD. But I found that boring and messed with it, and I quickly found my final card.
Rainbow Taichi was just me running out of ideas for spell cards so I decided to convert another card. I think I did fairly well, even if it is meant to be a rest before Double Rainbow Wind Chime.
The last two nonspells were actually rushed; I was out of ideas, so I decided to make a nonspell where Meiling stays above you and rains down shots based on Chi Remote Detonate. You can guess whether or not this was kept with modifications. The third was just something I knew I had to do; I didn't actually know the pattern would be so beautiful, at least in my opinion.
So basically, it was a bored night of programming. Most patterns didn't even turn out the way I imagined them; I just worked off of them to make them more fun or easier or harder. I'm good at improv, though, so maybe that's just it. :V