Needlebinding and Ivory Carving

My friend recently discovered needlebinding while working on a persona for a fun local group. Well, local to her, not quite so local to me. Anyway. My help was drafted for the creating of a needle for her to use. Originally I was just going to do one out of wood, but I've been looking for an excuse to play with carving ivory, as I have not tried it before. Mostly inspired by the leavings of mammoth ivory that you can find on eBay fairly often. I continue to have a deep love of odd bits of stuff for inspiring creations. It also helps that my friend is big on mammoth's anyway, so this was obviously the most awesome version possible of the needle.

Here are the two side of the finished product. Learned a lot about how to work with the material and only nicked myself once. Which is pretty good considering the level of exhausted I am today. It's a little odd in that it was a semi-wedge shaped piece, so it isn't quite even, but I think it will work. And hey, for a first attempt, I think it looks pretty good.