Today I managed to spend some time (4 bloody hours!!!!!) working to get the gold wire onto the pen's midsection. HINT: Don't buy gold coloured jewellery making wire EVER again. it is brittle ... has a memory of what it's wound around that's very hard to change ... in this case, the 3 inch reel it came on ... and is generally cantankerous to work with.
But I persevered
I will pluck up sufficient courage over the coming week to attempt replacing the "stone" with the real thing.
Hopefully (!!!!! It has been ...ahem ... some time now) in then not too distant future a suitable box and outer will turn up.
Anyway apologies for the crappy photos ... but here they are
By the way, you will see that the thread overlaps in places ... did my head in trying to correct that until I realised the genuine pen has exactly the same ... it is a characteristic of the wire and according to MB, emulates the appearance of thread more effectively ... which i take to mean that they couldn't get the stuff to play nicely either