thanks for the kind words...
i should have taken a pic of the back of the pen, the contrast is a bit better there. and the camera didn't do it much justice... the tricky part with this was finding the 1/4 of blank and matched up best with the next 1/4 piece of blank. unfortunately, i couldn't put them together how i wanted, rather i had to use whatever edge was straightest with the next edge. i hadn't built my blank cutting sled yet... all the better to try next time!