Bee on a "Honeycomb"

This is the third comb I have made, hopefully many more to come. They make for a nice little project that have lots of details involved. This comb is for a marquetry friend who gifted me a massive amount of veneers about a year ago and it took until now for an idea to come about. She is a bee keeper and jars her own honey (delicious as well!). I plan to make a box to give this to her. I don't have any pictures of my build process because I wasn't sure how it was going to come out. 

The marquetry started by making the honeycomb background. I used 1/16th (1.5mm) veneers in mahogany and maple, with black dyed veneer for the outlines of the honeycombs. All of it was assembled on stretched craft paper with hide glue. When I completed the background I cut the bee's body in using the piece by piece method. I have come to really enjoy it (even cutting only 1 copy at a time) because it challenges me to cut with incredible accuracy to achieve tight joint results (I feel like I accomplished it with this bee for the most part). 

After inlaying the bee's body I came up with a possibly new idea for creating trompe l'oeil wings (and other interesting effects). I thinned some blonde steer horn down to about 1/32 (0.75mm), or half the thickness of the background and bee's body (this made the horn trasnparent). Then I glued the pattern for the wings onto the horn veneer and cut it out like normal. When gluing it down to paper I spaced all the parts of the wing by the thickness of the blade I cut them with. When the glue dried I filled the spaces with ebony dust and hide glue, packing it in tight. 

I cut the wings off the paper and cleaned up the outside of them. The bee's body and background marquetry was inlaid into the jatoba I used to make the body of the comb. I used a dremel attached to the veritas pluge router to do all this part (my hands are getting worse from rheumatoid arthritis, so I have to cheat on my hand tools only love, shhhh don't tell anyone!). I dabbed a touch of glue on the wings so they would stay in place where I wanted them on the bee, then scribed the outline with an exacto knife. I routered down half way through these veneers (bee and background) and inlaid the wings into the cavity. Because the horn is transparent, you can see through the wings and see the background and bee's body behind them. 

I have seen horn used many different ways (paint, pigment, gold leaf, even paintings) behind the horn give some really neat effects, but never inlaying it half way through to use the background and elements of the marquetry themselves. Obviously you would need to use thicker veneers for the background and main elements of the picture (commercial veneer it would most likely not work very well). 

If anyone has seen this effect used in marquetry or inlay please direct me to where I can see more examples. I plan to use it on more pieces and have lots of ideas already forming to exploit this "transparent" marquetry technique. 

Thanks for looking in, my next project I make like this I promise to take pictures of the process!