I'm not much of an analog circuit designer, though I did spend a few years in Electrical Engineering before giving up hardware for software. So mostly I adapt existing circuits. I do generally understand the principles behind what I'm building though, and I've made a few modifications here and there to basic designs.
Aside from the commercial kits, I got most of my schematics from the web and books like Terrence Thomas' "Sound Synthesis: Analog and Digital Techniques" and Barry Klein's "Electronic Music Circuits", which was heavily influenced by the classic newsletter, Electronotes. If I were going to suggest a single book to someone looking to do modular synth DIY, it would be Barry Klein's book. I've noticed there's a PDF of it that Google finds easily. I'm not sure if it's a legitimate copy though.
My dual Attack/Release module is almost exactly Barry's version, except that I put a Serge Modular inspired inverter/scaling control on the output. (It's a knob that takes the AR's output and lets you vary it from, say, a +5v signal all the way down to a -5v signal. So the AR's can subtract or add to whatever you send them to. Pretty neat.)
My LFO is a straight up copy of Barry's LFO With Variable Triangle Offset and Symmetry, with a two color LED mounted in it so you can see it swing positive and negative.
And my Noise circuit, which is really nothing special, is also clearly derived from the Electronotes simple noise source, which also appears in Barry's book.
I used Thomas' design for the octavizer/pulse divider module, with an added comparator to condition the input. It's still in the "half constructed phase", though a breadboarded prototype worked pretty well.
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